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THE 

HUMAN  HARVEST 

ii 

A STUDY  OF  THE  DECAY  OF  FACES  THROUGH 
THE  SURVIVAL  OF  THE  UNFIT 

BY 

DAVID  STARR  JORDAN 

Chancellor  of 

Leland  Stanford  Junior  University 

'‘La  guerre  a produit  de  tout  temps  une  selection  a rebours." 

(novicow) 


BOSTON 

THE  BEACON  PRESS 

25  BEACON  STREET 


Copyright,  ipo/ 
The  Beacon  Press,  Inc. 


\^"C 


TO  THE 


MEMORY  OF  MY  BROTHER 

RUFUS  BACON  JORDAN 

(1838  - 1 862) 

OF  THE 

“ HUMAN  HARVEST” 

OF  1862 


x b 4 0 s. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2017  with  funding  from 
Duke  University  Libraries 


https://archive.org/details/humanharvest01jord 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

F | ^HIS  little  book  contains  the  substance 
of  two  essays  on  the  same  subject , the 
one  originally  delivered  in  Stanford  Univer- 
sity in  l8gg,  and  reprinted  by  the  Ameri- 
can Unitarian  Association  with  the  title  of 
“The  Blood  of  the  Nation,”  the  other  read 
at  Philadelphia  in  igo6,  at  the  two  hund- 
redth anniversary  of  the  birth  of  Benjamin 
Franklin,  with  the  title,  “The  Human 
Harvest.”  This  was  printed  in  the  Pro- 
ceedings of  the  American  Philosophical  So- 
ciety. D.  S. J. 

Stanford  University,  California 


T T OW  long  will  the  Republic  endure  ? So 
1 long  as  the  ideas  of  its  founders  remain 
dominant.  How  long  will  these  ideas  remain 
dominant  ? Just  so  long  as  the  blood  of  its  foun- 
ders remains  dominant  in  the  blood  of  its  people. 
Not  the  blood  of  Puritans  and  Virginians  alone , 
the  original  creators  of  free  states,  but  the  blood 
of  free-born  men, be  they  Greek, Roman,  Frank, 
Saxon , Norman,  Dane,  Celt , Scot,  Goth  or  Sa- 
murai. It  is  a free  stock  that  creates  a free  na- 
tion. Our  Republic  shall  endure  so  long  as  the 
human  harvest  is  good,  so  long  as  the  movement 
of  history , the  progress  of  science  and  industry  , 
leaves  for  the  future  the  best  and  not  the  worst 
of  each  generation. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

The  Human  Harvest 

PAGE 

i3 

A Dream  of  Fair  Horses 

x3 

A Dream  of  Swift  Horses 

1 9 

The  Story  of  the  Vires 

21 

Reversal  of  Selection  in  Rome 

24 

Rise  of  the  Mob  in  Rome 

25 

Words  of  Franklin 

27 

W ords  of  Otto  Seeck 

28 

The  Fall  of  Rome 

29 

Vir  and  Homo 

3 1 

History  Repeats  Itself 

35 

The  Field  of  Novara 

36 

A French  Cartoon 

38 

Blood  determines  History 

39 

History  determines  Blood 

41 

Men  and  Beasts  under  the  same  Laws 

42 

Selective  Breeding 

44 

Meaning  of  Progress 

45 

Illustrations  from  France 

46 

Heredity  repeats  what  she  finds 

5° 

The  Man  of  the  Hoe 

51 

The  Sifting  of  Men  in  France 

53 

The  Nobles  and  the  Peasantry 

54 

Effects  of  Primogeniture 

56 

[7] 

Contents 

Reversed  Selection  in  the  Reign  of  T error 

58 

The  Chronicle  of  the  Drum 

59 

Reversed  Selection  through  Repression  and 

Intolerance 

60 

Reversed  Selection  through  Monasticism 
Reversed  Selection  through  Abuse  of 

6 1 

Charity 

62 

Saved from  the  Army 

65 

Alcoholism  in  Race-Selection 

Reversed  Selection  through  the  Rush  to 

66 

Cities 

69 

Reversed  Selection  through  War 

70 

Wiertz's  Painting  of  Napoleon 

7i 

Napoleon  s Campaigns 

72 

The  Fall  of  Greece 

76 

The  Case  of  Germany 

77 

Effects  of  Emigration 

What  does  he  know  of  England , who  only 

78 

England  knows  ? 

80 

The  Case  of  Switzerland 

80 

The  Case  of  Spain 

82 

The  Greatness  of  Japan 

83 

What  of  England  ? 

85 

“ There' s a Widow  in  Sleepy  Chester  ” 

86 

Testimony  of  Kipling 

88 

[8] 

“ The  Widow  at  Windsor  " 

89 

The  Revelry  of  the  Dying 

90 

Contents 

The  Band  in  the  Pine-Wood 

91 

The  Song  of  the  Dead 

92 

Ave  Imperatrix 

93 

Tommy  Atkins 

99 

The  Survival  of  the  Fittest  in  W ar  ? 

101 

What  of  America  ? 

102 

Significance  of“  Sons  of  the  Revolution  ” 

103 

War  sometimes  inevitable 

104 

Brownell's  Roll  of  Honor 

106 

The  Phantom  Army 

1 12 

How  long  will  the  Republic  endure  ? 

JI5 

Like  the  Seed  is  the  Harvest 

11 6 

War  as  a Source  of  National  Strength 

117 

War  one  Influence  among  Many 

118 

Advantages  of  Civil  War 

120 

The  best  Political  Economy 

121 

[9] 

The  HUMAN  HARVEST  WAS  BAD  ! ” 
Thus  the  historian  sums  up  the 
conditions  in  Rome  in  the  days  of 
the  good  emperor  Marcus  Aurelius. 

By  this  he  meant  that  while  population 
and  wealth  were  increasing,  manhood  had 
failed.  There  were  men  enough  in  the 
streets  of  Rome,  men  enough  in  the  camps, 
men  enough  in  the  menial  labor  or  in  no 
labor  at  all,  but  of  good  soldiers  there  were 
too  few.  “Vir  had  given  place  to  homo,” 
Roman  men  to  mere  human  beings.  For 
the  business  of  the  state,  which  in  those  days 
was  mainly  war,  the  men  were  inadequate. 

In  the  recognition  of  this  condition  we 
touch  the  overshadowing  fact  in  the  history 
of  Europe,  the  effect  of  military  selection 
on  the  breed  of  men.  This  lesson,  in  such 
fashion  as  I may,  I shall  try  to  set  forth  in 
these  pages. 

In  beginning  this  discussion  I must  bring 
forward  certain  fragments  of  history,  stories 
told  because  they  are  true,  and  one  parable 
not  true,  but  told  for  the  lesson  it  teaches. 
And  this  is  the  first : Once  there  was  a man, 
strong,  wealthy  and  patient,  who  dreamed 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


A Dream 
of  fair 
Horses 


[n] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

of  a finer  type  of  horse  than  had  ever  yet 
existed.  This  horse  should  be  handsome, 
clean-limbed,  intelligent,  docile,  strong  and 
swift.  These  traits  were  to  be  not  those  of 
one  horse  alone,  a member  of  a favored 
equine  aristocracy,  they  were  to  be  “ bred  in 
the  bone  ” so  that  they  would  continue  from 
generation  to  generation  the  attributes  of  a 
special  common  type  of  horse.  And  with 
this  dream  ever  before  his  waking  eves,  he 
invoked  for  his  aid  the  four  twin  genii  of 
organic  life,  the  four  by  which  all  the  magic 
of  transformism  of  species  has  been  accom- 
plished either  in  nature  or  in  art.  And  these 
forces  once  in  his  service,  he  left  to  their  con- 
trol all  the  plans  included  in  his  great  am- 
bition. These  four  genii  or  fates  are  not 
strangers  to  us,  nor  were  they  new  to  the 
human  race.  Being  so  great  and  so  strong, 
they  are  invisible  to  all  save  those  who  seek 
them.  Men  who  deal  with  them  after  the 
fashion  of  science  give  them  commonplace 
names,  — variation,  heredity,  segregation, 
selection. 

M 

Because  not  all  horses  are  alike,  because 
in  fact  no  two  were  ever  quite  the  same,  the 

first  appeal  was  made  to  the  genius  of  Vari- 
ation. Looking  over  the  world  of  horses, 
he  found  to  his  hand  Kentucky  race-horses, 
clean-limbed,  handsome  and  fleet,  some 
more  so  and  others  less.  So  those  which  had 
the  most  of  the  virtues  of  the  horse  which 
was  to  be  were  chosen  to  be  blended  in  new 
creation.  Then  again,  he  found  English 
thoroughbred  horses,  selected  stock  of  Ara- 
bian ancestry,  hardy  and  strong  and  intel- 
ligent. These  virtues  were  needed  in  the 
production  of  the  perfect  horse.  And  here 
came  the  need  of  the  second  genius,  who  is 
called  Heredity.  With  the  crossing  of  the 
racer  with  the  thoroughbred,  all  qualities  of 
both  were  blended  in  the  progeny.  The  next 
generation  partook  of  all  desirable  traits  and 
again  of  undesirable  ones  as  well,  some  the 
one,  and  some  the  other,  for  sire  and  dam 
alike  had  given  the  stamp  of  its  own  kind 
and  for  the  most  part  in  equal  degree.  But 
again  never  in  a degree  quite  equal,  and  in 
some  measure  these  matters  varied  with  each 
sire  and  each  dam,  and  with  each  colt  of  all 
their  progeny.  It  was  found  that  the  pro- 
geny of  the  mare  called  Beautiful  Bells  ex- 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


[*5] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

celled  all  others  in  retaining  all  that  was  good 
in  fine  horses,  and  in  rejecting  all  that  a no- 
ble horse  should  not  have.  And  like  virtues 
were  attached  to  the  sires  called  Palo  Alto, 
Electricity  and  Electioneer. 

But  there  were  horses  and  horses;  horses 
not  of  the  chosen  breed,  and  should  these 
enter  the  fold  with  their  common  blood  it 
would  endanger  all  that  had  been  already 
accomplished.  For  the  ideal  horse  mating 
with  the  common  horse  controls  at  the  best 
but  half  the  traits  of  the  progeny.  If  the 
strain  were  to  be  established,  the  vulgar 
horseflesh  must  be  kept  away,  and  only  the 
best  remain  in  association  with  the  best. 
Thus  Segregation,  the  third  of  the  genii, 
was  called  into  service  lest  the  successes  of 
this  herd  be  lost  in  the  failure  of  some  other. 

[ 1 6] 

Under  the  spell  of  Heredity  all  the  horses 
partook  of  the  charm  of  Beautiful  Bells  and 
of  Electricity  and  of  Palo  Alto,  for  firmly 
and  persistently  all  others  were  banished 
from  their  presence.  There  were  some  who 
were  not  strong,  some  who  were  not  sleek, 
some  who  were  not  fleet,  some  who  were 
not  clean-limbed,  nor  docile,  nor  intelligent. 

At  least  they  were  not  so  to  the  degree  which 
the  dream  of  fair  horses  demanded.  By  the 
force  of  Selection,  all  such  were  sent  away. 
Variation  was  always  at  work  making  one 
colt  unlike  another;  Heredity  made  each 
colt  a blend  or  mosaic  of  traits  of  sire  and 
of  grandsires  and  granddams ; Selection  left 
only  good  traits  to  form  this  mosaic,  and 
the  grandsire  and  granddam,  sire  and  dam, 
and  the  rest  of  the  ancestry  lived  their  lives 
again  in  the  expanding  circle  of  descent. 

Thus,  in  the  final  result,  the  horses  who 
were  left  were  the  horses  of  their  owner’s 
dream.  The  future  of  the  breed  was  fixed, 
and  fixed  at  the  beginning  by  the  very  fram- 
ing of  the  conditions  under  which  it  lived. 
It  is  variation  which  gives  better  as  well  as 
worse.  It  is  heredity  which  saves  all  that  has 
been  attained — for  better  or  for  worse.  It 
is  selection  by  which  better  triumphs  over 
worse,  anditis  segregation  which  protects  the 
final  result  from  falling  again  into  the  grasp 
of  the  general  average.  In  all  this,  selection 
is  the  vital,  moving,  changing  force.  It 
throws  the  shaping  of  the  future  on  the  in- 
dividual chosen  by  the  present.  The  horse 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


[17] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


[18] 


who  is  left  marks  the  future  of  his  kind.  The 
history  of  the  steed  is  an  elongation  of  the 
history  of  those  who  are  chosen  for  parent- 
age. And  with  the  best  of  the  best  chosen 
for  parentage,  the  best  of  the  best  appears 
in  the  progeny.  The  horse-harvest  is  good 
in  each  generation.  As  the  seed  we  sow,  so 
shall  we  reap. 

And  this  story  is  true,  known  to  thousands 
of  men.  And  it  will  be  true  again  just  as 
often  as  men  may  try  to  carry  it  into  experi- 
ment. Anditwill  betrue  not  of  horses  alone, 
for  the  four  fates  which  guide  and  guard  life 
have  no  partiality  for  horses,  but  work  just 
as  persistently  for  cattle  or  sheep,  or  plums 
or  roses,  or  calla  or  cactus,  as  they  do  for 
horses  or  for  men.  From  the  very  begin- 
ning of  life  they  have  wrought  untiringly 
— and  in  your  life  and  in  mine  — in  the 
grass  of  the  field,  the  trees  of  the  forest — 
in  bird  and  beast,  everywhere  we  find  the 
traces  of  their  energy. 

And  this  brings  me  to  my  second  story, 
which  is  not  true  as  history,  but  only  in  its 
way  as  parable,  forever  trying  to  become 
true. 


There  was  once  a man  — strenuous  no 
doubt,  but  not  wise,  for  he  did  not  give  heed 
to  the  real  nature  of  things,  and  so  he  set 
himself  to  do  by  his  own  unaided  hand  the 
work  which  only  the  genii  can  accomplish. 
And  thisman  possessed  alsoastudof  horses. 
They  were  docile,  clean-limbed,  fleet,  and 
strong,  and  he  would  make  them  still  more 
strong  and  fleet.  So  he  rode  them  swiftly 
with  all  his  might,  day  and  night,  always 
on  the  course,  always  pushed  to  the  utmost, 
leaving  only  the  dull  and  sluggish  to  remain 
in  the  stalls.  For  it  was  his  dream  to  fill 
these  horses  with  the  spirit  of  action,  with 
the  glory  of  swift  motion,  that  this  glory 
might  be  carried  on  and  on  to  the  last  gen- 
eration of  horses.  There  were  some  who 
could  not  keep  the  pace,  and  to  these  and 
these  alone  he  assigned  the  burden  of  bear- 
ing colts.  And  the  feeble  and  the  broken,  the 
dull  of  wit,  the  coarse  of  limb,  became  each 
year  the  mothers  of  the  colts.  The  horses 
who  were  chosen  for  the  race-course  he 
trained  with  every  care,  and  every  stroke  of 
discipline  showed  itself  in  the  flashing  eyes 
and  straining  muscles, — such  were  the  best 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


A Dream 
of  swift 
horses 


CJ9] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

horses.  But  the  other  horses  were  the  horses 
who  were  left.  From  their  loins  came  the 
next  generation,  and  with  these  there  was  less 
fire  and  less  speed  than  the  first  horses  pos- 
sessed in  such  large  measure.  But  still  the 
rush  went  on  — whip  and  spur  made  good 
the  lack  of  native  movement.  The  racers 
still  pushed  on  the  course,  while  in  the  stalls 
and  paddocks  at  home  the  dull  and  com- 
mon horses  bore  their  dull  and  common 
colts.  Variation  was  still  at  work  with  these 
as  patiently  as  ever.  Heredity  followed,  re- 
peating faithfully  whatever  was  left  to  her. 
Segregation,  always  conservative,  guarded 
her  own,  but  could  not  make  good  the  de- 
ficiencies. Selection,  forced  to  act  perversely, 
chose  for  the  future  the  worst  and  not  the 
best,  as  was  her  usual  fashion.  So  the  cur- 
rent of  life  ran  steadily  downward.  The 
herd  was  degenerating  because  it  was  each 
year  an  inferior  herd  which  bred.  Each  gen- 
eration yielded  weaker  colts,  rougher,  duller, 
clumsier  colts,  and  no  amount  of  training 
or  lash  or  whip  or  spur  made  any  perma- 
nent difference  for  the  better.  The  horse- 

[20] 

harvest  was  had.  Thoroughbred  and  race- 

horse  gave  place  to  common  beasts,  for  in 
the  removal  of  the  noble  the  ignoble  always 
finds  its  opportunity.  It  is  always  the  horse 
that  remains  which  determines  the  future  of 
the  stud. 

In  like  fashion  from  the  man  who  is  left 
flows  the  current  of  human  history. 

This  tale  then  is  a parable,  a story  of  what 
never  was,  but  which  is  always  trying  to  be- 
come true. 

Once  there  was  a great  king  — and  the  na- 
tion overwhich  he  bore  rule  lay  on  the  flanks 
of  a mountain  range,  spreading  across  fair 
hills  and  valleys  green  and  fertile  across  to 
the  Mediterranean  Sea.  And  the  men  of  his 
race,  fair  and  strong,  self-reliant  and  self- 
confident,  men  of  courage  and  men  of  ac- 
tion, were  men  “who  knew  no  want  they 
could  not  fill  for  themselves.”  They  knew 
none  on  whom  they  looked  down,  and  none 
to  whom  they  regarded  themselves  inferior. 
And  for  all  things  which  men  could  accom- 
plish these  plowmen  of  the  Tiber  and  the 
Apennines  felt  themselves  fully  competent 
and  adequate.  Vir,  they  called  themselves 
in  their  own  tongue,  and  virile , virilis , men 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


The  Story 
of  the 
Vires 


[21] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

like  them  are  called  to  this  day.  It  was  the 
weakling  and  the  slave  who  was  crowded  to 
the  wall ; the  man  of  courage  begat  descend- 
ants. In  each  generation  and  from  genera- 
tion to  generation  the  human  harvest  was 
good.  And  the  great  wise  king  who  ruled 
them  ; but  here  my  story  halts  — for  there 
was  no  king.  There  could  be  none.  For 
it  was  written,  men  fit  to  be  called  men,  men 
who  are  vires , “ are  too  self-willed,  too  inde- 
pendent, and  too  self-centred  to  be  ruled  by 
anybody  but  themselves.”  Kings  are  for 
weaklings,  not  for  men.  Men  free-born  con- 
trol their  own  destinies.  “ The  fault  is  not 
in  our  stars,  but  in  ourselves  that  we  are 
underlings.”  For  it  was  later  said  of  these 
same  days  : “There  was  a Brutus  once,  who 
would  have  brooked  the  Eternal  Devil  to 
take  his  seat  in  Rome,  as  easily  as  a king.” 
And  so  there  was  no  king  to  cherish  and  con- 
trol these  men  his  subjects.  The  spirit  of 
freedom  was  the  only  ruler  they  knew,  and 
this  spirit  being  herself  metaphoric,  called 
to  her  aid  the  four  great  genii  which  create 
and  recreate  nations.  Variation  was  ever  at 

[22] 

work,  while  heredity  held  fast  all  that  she 

developed.  Segregation  in  her  mountain 

The 

fastnesses  held  the  world  away,  and  selec- 

Human 

tionchose  the  best  andfor  thebestpurposes, 

Harvest 

casting  aside  the  weakling  and  the  slave, 

holding  the  man  for  the  man’s  work;  and 

ever  the  man’s  work  was  at  home,  building 

the  cities,  subduing  the  forests,  draining  the 

marshes,  adjusting  the  customs  and  statutes, 

preparing  for  the  new  generations.  So  the 

men  begat  sons  of  men  after  their  own  fash- 

ion,  and  the  men  of  strength  and  courage 

were  ever  dominant.  The  Spirit  of  Freedom 

was  a wise  master,  cares  wisely  for  all  that 

he  controls. 

So  in  the  early  days,  when  Romans  were 

men,  when  Rome  was  small,  without  glory, 

without  riches,  without  colonies  and  with- 

out  slaves,  these  were  the  days  of  Roman 

greatness. 

Then  the  Spirit  of  Freedom  little  by  little 

gave  way  to  the  Spirit  of  Domination.  Con- 

scious  of  power,  men  sought  to  exercise  it, 

not  on  themselves  but  on  one  another.  Lit- 

tie  by  little  this  meant  banding  together, 

aggression,  suppression,  plunder,  struggle, 

glory,  and  all  that  goes  with  the  pomp  and 

[23] 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

circumstance  of  war.  The  individuality  of 
men  was  lost  in  the  aggrandizement  of  the 
few.  Independence  was  swallowed  up  in 
ambition,  patriotism  came  to  have  a new 
meaning.  It  was  transferred  from  the  hearth 
and  home  to  the  trail  of  the  army. 

Reversal 
of  selec- 
tion in 
Rome 

It  does  not  matter  to  us  now  what  were 
the  details  of  the  subsequent  history  of 
Rome.  W e have  now  to  consider  only  a sin- 
gle factor.  In  science  this  factor  is  known 
as  “reversal  of  selection.”  “ Send  forth  the 
best  ye  breed  ! ” That  was  the  word  of  the 
Roman  war-call.  And  the  spirit  of  Domi- 
nation took  these  words  literally,  and  the 
best  were  sent  forth.  In  the  conquests  of 
Rome,  Vir , the  real  man,  went  forth  to  battle 
and  to  the  work  of  foreign  invasion;  Homo , 
the  human  being,  remained  in  the  farm  and 
the  workshop  and  begat  the  new  genera- 
tions. Thus  “Vir  gave  place  to  Homo.” 
The  sons  of  real  men  gave  place  to  the  sons 
of  scullions,  stable-boys,  slaves,  camp-fol- 
lowers, and  the  riff-raff  of  those  the  great, 
victorious  army  cannot  use  but  does  not 
exclude. 

C^4] 

The  fall  of  Rome  was  not  due  to  luxury, 

effeminacy,  corruption,  the  wickedness  of 
Nero  and  Caligula,  the  weakness  of  the 
train  of  Constantine’s  worthless  descend- 
ants. It  was  fixed  at  Philippi,  when  the  spirit 
of  domination  was  victorious  over  the  spirit 
of  freedom.  It  was  fixed  still  earlier,  in  the 
rise  of  consuls  and  triumvirates  and  the  fall 
of  the  simple,  sturdy, self-sufficient  race  who 
would  brook  no  arbitrary  ruler.  When  the 
real  men  fell  in  war,  or  were  left  in  far-away 
colonies,  the  life  of  Rome  still  went  on.  But 
it  was  a different  type  of  Roman  which  con- 
tinued it,  and  this  new  type  repeated  in  Ro- 
man history  its  weakling  parentage. 

Thus  we  read  in  Roman  history  the  rise 
of  the  mob  and  of  the  emperor  who  is  the 
mob’s  exponent.  It  is  not  the  presence  of 
the  emperor  which  makes  imperialism.  It  is 
the  absence  of  the  people,  the  want  of  men. 
Babies  in  their  day  have  been  emperors.  A 
wooden  image  would  serve  the  same  pur- 
pose. More  than  once  it  has  served  it.  The 
decline  of  a people  can  have  but  one  cause, — 
the  decline  in  the  type  from  which  it  draws 
its  sires.  A herd  of  cattle  can  degenerate  in 
no  other  way  than  this,  and  a race  of  men 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


Rise  of 
the  mob 
in  Rome 


[25] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

is  under  the  same  laws.  By  the  rise  in  abso- 
lute power,  as  a sort  of  historical  barometer, 
we  may  mark  the  decline  in  the  breed  of 
the  people.  We  see  this  in  the  history  of 
Rome.  The  conditional  power  of  Julius 
Caesar,  resting  on  his  own  tremendous  per- 
sonality, showed  that  the  days  were  past  of 
Cincinnatus  and  of  Junius  Brutus.  The 
power  of  Augustus  showed  the  same.  But 
the  decline  went  on.  It  is  written  that  “the 
little  finger  of  Constantine  was  thicker  than 
the  loins  of  Augustus.”  The  emperor  in  the 
time  of  Claudius  and  Caligula  was  not  the 
strong  man  who  held  in  check  all  lesser  men 
and  organizations.  He  was  the  creature  of 
the  mob;  and  the  mob,  intoxicated  with  its 
own  work,  worshipped  him  as  divine. 
Doubtless  the  last  emperor,  Augustulus 
Romulus,  before  he  was  thrown  into  the 
scrap-heap  of  history,  was  regarded  in  the 
mob’s  eyes  and  his  own  as  the  most  super- 
human of  them  all. 

[26] 

What  have  the  historians  to  say  of  these 
matters  ? Very  few  have  grasped  the  full  sig- 
nificance of  their  own  words,  for  very  few 
have  looked  on  men  as  organisms,  and  on 

nations  as  dependent  on  the  specific  char- 
acter of  the  organisms  destined  for  their  re- 
production. 

So  far  as  the  writer  knows,  the  first  one  to 
think  of  man  thus  as  “an  inhabitant,”  a 
species  in  nature  among  other  species  and 
dependent  on  nature’s  forces  as  other  ani- 
mals and  other  inhabitants  must  be,  was 
Benjamin  Franklin. 

“All  war  is  bad,”  said  he,  “some  wars 
worse  than  others.”  Then,  once  again,  in 
more  explicit  terms,  referring  to  the  dark 
shadow  of  war  cast  over  scenes  of  peace,  the 
evil  of  the  standing  army,  Franklin  said  to 
Baynes : 

“ If  one  power  singly  were  to  reduce  its 
standing  army  it  would  be  instantly  over- 
run by  other  nations.  Yet  I think  there  is 
one  effect  of  a standing  army  which  must 
in  time  be  felt  so  as  to  bring  about  the  ab- 
olition of  the  system.  A standing  army  not 
only  diminishes  the  population  of  a coun- 
try, but  even  the  size  and  breed  of  the  hu- 
man species.  For  an  army  is  the  flower  of 
the  nation.  All  the  most  vigorous,  stout, 
and  well-made  men  in  a kingdom  are  to  be 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


Words  of 
Franklin 


07] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

found  in  the  army,  and  these  men  in  gen- 
eral cannot  marry.”1 

What  is  true  of  standing  armies  is  far  more 
true  of  armies  that  fight  and  fall ; for,  as 
Franklin  said  again,  “Wars  are  not  paid 
for  in  war  times : the  bill  comes  later.”  For 
“in  all  times,”  as  Novicow  observes,  “war 
must  reverse  the  process  of  selection.”2 
Similar  observations  as  to  the  effects  of 

Views  of 
Otto 
Seeck 

military  selection  are  recorded  by  Herbert 
Spencer. 

In  his  great  history  of  “The  Downfall  of 
the  Ancient  World”  (Der  Untergang  der 
antiken  Welt),  Professor  Otto  Seeck,  of  the 
University  of  Greifeswald,  finds  this  down- 
fall due  solely  to  the  rooting  out  of  the  best 
(“die  Ausrottung  der  Besten”).  The  his- 
torian of  the  “ Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Ro- 
man Empire,”  or  any  other  empire,  is  en- 
gaged solely  with  the  details  of  the  process 
by  which  the  best  men  are  exterminated. 
Speaking  of  Greece,  Dr.  Seeck  says,  “A 
wealth  of  force  of  spirit  went  down  in  the 

[28] 

1 Parton’s  “ Life  of  Franklin,”  II,  p.  572. 

2 La  guerre  a produit  de  tout  temps  une  selection  a 
rebours”  (Novicow). 

suicidal  wars.”  “In  Rome,  Marius  and 
Cinna  slew  the  aristocrats  by  hundreds  and 
thousands.  Sulla  destroyed  the  democrats, 
and  not  less  thoroughly.  Whatever  of 
strong  blood  survived,  fell  as  an  offering  to 
the  proscription  of  the  Triumvirate.”  “The 
Romans  had  less  of  spontaneous  force  to 
lose  than  the  Greeks.  Thus  desolation  came 
to  them  sooner.  Whoever  was  bold  enough 
to  rise  politically  in  Rome  was  almost  with- 
out exception  thrown  to  the  ground.  Only 
cowards  remained , and  from  their  brood  came 
forward  the  new  generations.  Cowardice 
showed  itself  in  lack  of  originality  and  in 
slavish  following  of  masters  and  traditions.” 

The  Romans  of  the  Republic  could  not 
have  made  the  history  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire. In  their  hands  it  would  have  been  still 
a republic.  Could  they  have  held  aloof  from 
world-conquering  schemes,  Rome  might 
have  remained  a republic,  enduring  even  to 
ourown  day.  The  seeds  of  destruction  lie  not 
in  the  race  nor  in  the  form  of  government, 
nor  in  ambition,  nor  in  wealth,  nor  in  luxury, 
but  in  the  influences  by  which  the  best  men 
are  cut  off  from  the  work  of  parenthood. 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


The  fall 
of  Rome 


[29] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

“The  Roman  Empire,”  says  Seeley, “per- 
ished for  want  of  men.”  Even  Julius  Caesar 
notes  the  dire  scarcity  of  men  (Beivrjv  oXi- 
'yavdpoTriav).  And  at  the  same  time  it  is 
noted  that  there  are  men  enough.  Rome 
was  filling  up  like  an  overflowing  marsh. 
Men  of  a certain  type  were  plenty,  “ people 
with  guano  in  their  composition,”  to  use 
Emerson’s  striking  phrase,  but  the  self- 
reliant  farmers,  “ the  hardy  dwellers  on  the 
flanks  of  the  Apennines,”  the  Roman  men 
of  the  early  Roman  days,  these  were  fast 
going,  and  with  the  change  in  the  breed 
came  the  change  in  Roman  history. 

“ The  mainspring  of  the  Roman  army  for 
centuries  had  been  the  patient  strength  and 
courage,  capacity  for  enduring  hardships,  in- 
stinctive submission  to  military  discipline 
of  the  population  that  lined  the  Apennines.” 

With  the  Antonines  came  “a  period  of 
sterility  and  barrenness  in  human  beings.” 

“ The  human  harvest  was  bad."  Bounties 

[30] 

were  offered  for  marriage.  Penalties  were 
devised  against  race-suicide.  “ Marriage,” 
says  Metellus,  “is  a duty  which,  however 
painful,  every  citizen  ought  manfully  to  dis- 

charge.”  Wars  were  conducted  in  the  face 
of  a declining  birth-rate,  and  this  decline  in 
quality  and  quantity  of  the  human  harvest 
engaged  very  early  the  attention  of  the  wise 
men  of  Rome. 

“ The  effect  of  the  wars  was  that  the  ranks 
of  the  small  farmers  were  decimated,  while 
the  number  of  slaves  who  did  not  serve  in 
the  army  multiplied  ” (Bury). 

Thus  “Vir  gave  place  to  Homo”  real  men 
to  mere  human  beings.  There  were  always 
men  enough  such  as  they  were.  “A  hen- 
coop will  be  filled,  whatever  the  (original) 
number  of  hens,”  said  Benjamin  Franklin. 
And  thus  the  mob  filled  Rome.  No  won- 
der the  mob-leader,  the  mob-hero  rose  in 
relative  importance.  No  wonder  that  “/£<? 
little  finger  of  Constantine  was  thicker  than  the 
loins  of  Augustus.”  No  wonder  that  “ if  Tibe- 
rius chastised  his  subjects  with  whips,  Val- 
entinian  chastised  them  with  scorpions.” 

“Government  having  assumed  godhead, 
took  at  the  same  time  the  appurtenances  of 
it.  Officials  multiplied.  Subjects  lost  their 
rights.  Abject  fear  paralyzed  the  people 
and  those  that  ruled  were  intoxicated  with 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


Vir  and. 
Homo 


[31] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

insolence  and  cruelty”  (Zumpt).  “The 
worst  government  is  that  which  is  most  wor- 
shipped as  divine.”  “The  emperor  pos- 
sessed in  the  army  an  overwhelming  force 
over  which  citizens  had  no  influence,  which 
was  totally  deaf  to  reason  or  eloquence, 
which  had  no  patriotism  because  it  had  no 
country,  which  had  no  humanity  because  it 
had  no  domestic  ties.”  “There  runs  through 
Roman  literature  a brigand’s  and  barbari- 
an’s contempt  for  honest  industry.”  “Ro- 
man civilization  was  not  a creative  kind,  it 
was  military,  that  is,  destructive.”  What 
was  the  end  of  it  all?  The  nation  bred  real 
men  no  more.  To  cultivate  the  Roman 
fields  “ whole  tribes  were  borrowed .”  The 

[32] 

man  of  the  quick  eye  and  the  strong  arm 
gave  place  to  the  slave,  the  scullion,  the 
pariah,  the  man  with  the  hoe,  the  man  whose 
lot  does  not  change,  because  in  him  there 
lies  no  power  to  change  it.  “Slaves  have 
wrongs,  but  freemen  alone  have  rights.”  So 
at  the  end  the  Roman  world  yielded  to  the 
barbaric,  because  it  was  weaker  in  force. 
“The  barbarian  settled  and  peopled  the  em- 
pire rather  than  conquered  it.”  It  was  the 

weakness  of  war-worn  Rome  that  gave  the 
Germanic  races  their  first  opportunity.  And 
the  process  is  recorded  in  history  as  the  fall 
of  Rome. ' 

“ Out  of  every  hundred  thousand  strong  men , 
eighty  thousand  were  slain.  Out  of  every  hun- 
dred thousand  weaklings  ninety  to  ninety-five 
thousand  were  left  to  survive .”  This  is  Dr. 
Seeck’s  calculation,  and  the  biological  sig- 
nificance of  such  mathematics  must  be  evi- 
dent at  once.  Dr.  Seeck  speaks  with  scorn 
of  the  idea  that  Rome  fell  from  the  decay 
of  old  age,  from  the  corruption  of  luxury, 
from  neglect  of  military  tactics  or  from  the 
over-diffusion  of  culture. 

“It  is  inconceivable  that  the  mass  of  Ro- 
mans suffered  from  over-culture.” 2 “In 
condemning  the  sinful  luxury  of  wealthy  Ro- 
mans, we  forget  that  the  trade-lords  of  the 

'“Die  Ausrottung  der  Besten,  die  jenen  schwa- 
cheren  Volken  die  Vernichtung  brachte,  hat  die  starken 
Germanen  erst  befahigt,  auf  den  Triimmern  der  anti- 
ken Welt  neue  dauernde  Gemeinschaften  zu  errichten.” 
— Otto  Seeck. 

2 “ Damitsprechend  hat  man  das  Wort  ‘ Ueberkultur’ 
iiberhaupt  erfunden,  als  wenn  ein  zn  grosses  Maass  von 
Kultur  iiberhaupt  denkbar  ware.”  — Otto  Seeck. 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


[33] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  were  scarce- 
ly inferior  in  this  regard  to  Lucullus  and 
Apicius,  their  waste  and  luxury  not  consti- 
tuting the  slightest  check  to  the  advance  of 
the  nations  to  which  these  men  belonged. 
The  people  who  lived  in  luxury  in  Rome 
were  scattered  more  thinly  than  in  any  mod- 
ern state  of  Europe.  The  masses  lived  at 
all  times  more  poorly  and  frugally  because 
they  could  do  nothing  else.  Can  we  con- 
ceive that  a war-force  of  untold  millions  of 
people  is  rendered  effeminate  by  the  luxury 
of  a few  hundreds?” 

“Too  long  have  historians  looked  on  the 
rich  and  noble  as  marking  the  fate  of  the 
world.  Half  the  Roman  Empire  was  made 
up  of  rough  barbarians  untouched  by  Greek 
or  Roman  culture.” 

“Whatever  the  remote  and  ultimate  cause 
may  have  been,  the  immediatecause  to  which 
the  fall  of  the  empire  can  be  traced  is  a phy- 
sical, not  a moral  decay.  In  valor,  discipline 
and  science  the  Roman  armies  remained 

[34] 

what  they  had  always  been,  and  the  peas- 
ant emperors  of  Illyricum  were  worthy  suc- 
cessors of  Cincinnatus  and  Caius  Marius. 

But  the  problem  was,  how  to  replenish  those 
armies.  Men  were  wanting.  The  Empire 
perished  for  want  of  men”  (Seeley).  To  say 
that  nations  die  of  “old  age  ” is  the  veriest 
nonsense.  Nations  fail  only  when  they  cease 
to  breed  men. 

“Severe,”  “austere”  are  good  old  Roman 
words,  and  to  other  emperors  besides  Septi- 
mius  Severus  they  were  applied  with  jus- 
tice. “Luxurious,”  “uxorious”  are  also 
Roman  words,  and  for  some  emperors  these 
were  used  also.  But  for  the  most  part  these 
were  no  more  characteristic  than  the  others. 

Does  history  ever  repeat  itself?  It  always 
does  if  it  is  true  history.  If  it  does  not  we 
are  dealing  not  with  history  but  with  mere 
succession  of  incidents.  Like  causes  pro- 
duce like  effects,  just  as  often  as  man  may 
choose  to  test  them.  Whenever  men  use  a 
nation  for  the  test,  poor  seed  yields  a poor 
fruitage.  Where  the  weakling  and  the  cow- 
ard survives  in  human  history,  there  “ the 
human  harvest  is  bad,”  and  it  can  never  be 
otherwise. 

Not  long  ago  I visited  the  city  of  Novara, 
in  northern  Italy.  There,  just  to  the  south 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


History 

repeats 

itself 


[35] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

of  the  town,  in  a wheat-field,  the  farmers 
have  ploughed  up  skulls  of  men  till  they 
have  piled  up  a pyramid  ten  or  twelve  feet 

The  field 
of  Novara 

high.  Over  this  pyramid  some  one  has  built 
a canopy  to  keep  off  the  rain.  These  were 
the  skulls  of  young  men  of  Savoy,  Sardinia, 
and  Austria,  — men  of  eighteen  to  thirty- 
five  years  of  age,  without  physical  blemish 
so  far  as  may  be,  — peasants  from  the  farms 
and  workmen  from  the  shops,  who  met  at 
Novara  to  kill  each  other  over  a matter  in 
which  they  had  very  little  concern.  Should 
Charles  Albert,  the  Prince  of  Savoy,  sit  on 
his  unstable  throne  or  must  he  yield  it  to 
some  one  else?  This  was  the  question,  and 
this  question  the  battle  of  Novara  tried  to 
decide.  It  matters  not  what  this  decision  was. 
History  records  it,  as  she  does  many  matters 
of  less  moment.  But  this  fact  concerns  us, 
— here  in  thousands  they  died.  Farther  on, 
Frenchmen,  Austrians,  and  Italians  fell  to- 
gether at  Magenta,  in  the  same  cause.  You 
know  the  color  that  we  call  Magenta,  the 
hue  of  the  blood  that  flowed  out  under  the 

[36] 

olive-trees.  Solferino,  once  that  battle-field 
gave  its  name  to  scarlet  ribbons,  the  hue  of 

the  blood  that  stained  her  orange-groves. 
Lodi,  Marengo  — all  these  names  call  up 
memories  of  idle  carnage,  of  wasted  life.  Go 
over  Italy  as  you  will,  there  is  scarcely  a 
spot  not  crimsoned  by  the  blood  of  France, 
scarcely  a railway  station  without  its  pile  of 
French  skulls.  You  can  trace  them  across 
to  Egypt,  to  the  foot  of  the  Pyramids.  You 
will  find  them  in  Germany, — at  Ulm  and 
Wagram,  at  Jena  and  Leipzig,  at  Lutzen 
and  Bautzen,  at  Hohenlinden  and  at  Aus- 
terlitz.  You  will  find  them  in  Russia,  at 
Moscow;  in  Belgium,  at  Waterloo.  “A  boy 
can  stop  a bullet  as  well  as  a man,”  said 
Napoleon  ; and  with  the  rest  are  the  skulls 
and  bones  of  boys,  “ere  evening  to  be  trod- 
den like  the  grass.”  “ Born  to  be  food  for 
powder  ” was  the  grim  epigram  of  the  day, 
summing  up  the  life  of  the  French  peasant. 
Read  the  dreary  record  of  the  glory  of 
France,  the  slaughter  at  Waterloo,  the 
wretched  failure  of  Moscow,  the  miserable 
deeds  of  Sedan,  the  waste  of  Algiers,  the 
poison  of  Madagascar,  the  crimes  of  Indo- 
China,  the  hideous  results  of  barrack  vice 
and  its  entail  of  disease  and  sterility,  and 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


[37] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

you  will  understand  the  “ Man  of  the  Hoe.” 
The  man  who  is  left,  the  man  whom  glory 
cannot  use,  becomes  the  father  of  the  future 
men  of  France.  As  the  long-horn  aborigi- 
nal type  reappears  in  a neglected  or  abused 
herd  of  high-bred  cattle,  so  comes  forth  the 
aboriginal  man,  the  “ Man  of  the  Hoe,”  in 
a wasted  race  of  men. 

In  the  loss  of  war  we  count  not  alone  the 
man  who  falls  or  whose  life  is  tainted  with 
disease.  There  is  more  than  one  in  the  man’s 
life.  The  bullet  that  pierces  his  heart  goes 
to  the  heart  of  at  least  one  other.  For  each 

A French 

cartoon 

soldier  has  a sweetheart ; and  if  she  remain 
single  for  his  sake,  so  far  as  the  race  is  con- 
cerned, the  one  is  lost  as  well  as  the  other. 

A recent  French  cartoon  pictures  the  peas- 
ant of  a hundred  years  ago  ploughing  in  a 
field,  hopeless  and  dejected,  a gilded  mar- 
quis on  his  back,  tapping  his  gilded  snuff- 
box. Another  cartoon  shows  the  French 
peasant  of  to-day,  still  at  the  plough,  and 
equally  hopeless.  On  his  back  is  an  armed 
soldier  who  should  be  at  another  plough, 
while  on  the  back  of  the  soldier  rides  the  sec- 

[38] 

ond  burden  of  Shylock  the  money-lender. 

more  cruel  and  more  heavy  even  than  the 
dainty  marquis  of  the  old  regime.  So  long 
as  war  remains,  the  burden  of  France  can- 
not be  shifted. 

In  the  evolution  of  races  and  of  nations  we 
find  at  the  outset  two  general  laws,  the  one 
self-evident,  the  other  not  apparent  at  first 
sight,  but  equally  demonstrable.  The  blood  of 
a nation  determines  its  history.  This  is  the  first 
proposition.  The  second  is,  The  history  of  a 
nation  determines  its  blood.  As  for  the  first,  no 
one  doubts  that  the  character  of  men  con- 
trols their  deeds.  In  the  long  run  and  with 
masses  of  mankind  this  must  be  true,  how- 
ever great  the  emphasis  we  may  lay  on  indi- 
vidual initiative  or  on  individual  variation. 

Equally  true  is  it  that  the  present  character 
of  a nation  is  made  by  its  past  history.  Those 
who  are  alive  to-day  are  the  resultants  of  the 
stream  of  heredity  as  modified  by  the  vicis- 
situdes through  which  the  nation  has  passed. 
The  blood  of  the  nation  flows  in  the  veins 
of  those  who  survive.  Those  who  die  with- 
out descendants  can  not  color  the  stream  of 
heredity.  It  must  take  its  traits  from  the 
actual  parentage. 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


Blood,  de- 
termines 
history 


[39] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

The  word  “ blood  ” in  this  sense  is  figura- 
tive only,  an  expression  formed  to  cover  the 
qualities  of  heredity.  Such  traits,  as  the 
phrase  goes, “run  in  the  blood.”  In  the  ear- 
lier philosophy  it  was  held  that  blood  was  the 
actual  physical  vehicle  of  heredity,  that  the 
traits  bequeathed  from  sire  to  son  as  the 
characteristics  of  families  or  races  ran  literal- 
ly in  the  literal  blood.  We  know  now  that 
this  is  not  the  case.  W e know  that  the  actual 
blood  in  the  actual  veins  plays  no  part  in 
heredity,  that  the  transfusion  of  blood  means 
no  more  than  the  transposition  of  food,  and 
that  the  physical  basis  of  the  phenomena  of 
inheritance  is  found  in  the  structure  of  the 
germ-cell  and  its  contained  germ-plasm. 

But  the  old  word  well  serves  our  purposes. 
The  blood  which  is  “thicker  than  water” 
is  the  symbol  of  race  unity.  I n this  sense  the 
blood  of  the  people  concerned  is  at  once  the 
cause  and  the  result  of  the  deeds  recorded  in 

[40] 

their  history.  For  example,  wherever  an 
Englishman  goes,  he  carries  with  him  the 
elements  of  English  history.  It  is  a British 
deed  which  he  does,  British  history  that  he 
makes.  Thus,  too,  a Jew  is  a Jew  in  all  ages 

and  climes,  and  his  deeds  everywhere  bear 
the  stamp  of  J ewish  individuality.  A Greek 
is  a Greek ; a Chinaman  remains  a China- 
man. In  like  fashion  the  race-traits  color  all 
history  made  by  Tartars,  or  negroes,  or  Ma- 
lays, or  Japanese. 

The  climate  which  surrounds  a tribe  of  men 
may  affect  the  activities  of  these  men  as  in- 
dividuals or  as  an  aggregate,  education  may 
intensify  their  powers  or  mellow  their  preju- 
dices, oppression  may  make  them  servile  or 
dominion  make  them  overbearing;  but 
these  traits  and  their  resultants,  so  far  as 
science  knows,  do  not  “run  in  the  blood,” 
they  are  not  “ bred  in  the  bone.”  Older 
thanclimateor  training  or  experience  are  the 
traits  of  heredity,  and  in  the  long  run  it  is 
always  “ blood  which  tells.” 

On  the  other  hand,  the  deeds  of  a race  of 
men  must  in  the  end  determine  its  blood. 
Could  we  with  full  knowledge  sum  up  the 
events  of  the  past  history  of  any  body  of 
men,  we  could  indicate  the  kinds  of  men 
destroyed  in  these  events.  The  others 
would  be  left  to  write  the  history  of  the 
future.  It  is  the  “ man  who  is  left”  in  the 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


History 

deter- 

mines 

blood 


[+1] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

march  of  history  who  gives  to  history  its 
future  trend.  By  the  “ man  who  is  left  ” we 
mean  the  man  who  remains  at  home  to  be- 
come the  father  of  the  family,  as  distin- 
guished from  the  man  who  in  one  way  or 
another  is  sacrificed  for  the  nation’s  weal  or 
woe.  If  any  class  of  men  be  destroyed  by 
political  or  social  forces  or  by  the  action  of 
institutions,  they  leave  no  offspring,  and 
their  like  will  cease  to  appear. 

“ Send  forth  the  best  ye  breed.”  If  we  were 
to  accept  this  advice  literally  and  complete- 
ly, the  nation  in  time  would  breed  only 
second-rate  men.  By  the  sacrifice  of  their 
best,  or  the  emigration  of  the  best,  and  by 
such  influences  alone,  have  races  and  na- 
tions fallen  from  first-rate  to  second-rate  or 

Men  and 
beasts 
under  the 
samelanxis 

third-rate  in  the  movement  of  history. 

For  a race  of  men  or  a herd  of  cattle  are 
governed  by  the  same  laws  of  selection. 
Those  who  survive  inherit  the  traits  of  their 

[42] 

own  actual  ancestry.  In  the  herd  of  cattle, 
to  destroy  the  strongest  bulls,  the  fairest 
cows,  the  most  promising  calves,  is  to  allow 
those  not  strong  nor  fair  nor  promising  to 
become  the  parents  of  the  coming  herd. 

Under  this  influence  the  herd  will  deterior- 
ate, although  the  individuals  of  the  inferior 
herd  are  no  worse  than  their  own  actual  par- 
ents. Such  a process  is  called  race-degener- 
ation, and  it  is  the  only  race-degeneration 
known  in  the  history  of  cattle  or  men.  The 
scrawny,  lean,  infertile  herd  is  the  natural 
offspring  of  the  same  type  of  parents.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  we  sell  or  destroy  the 
rough,  lean,  or  feeble  calves,  we  shall  have 
a herd  descended  from  the  best.  It  is  said 
that  when  the  short-horned  Durham  cat- 
tle first  attracted  attention  in  England,  the 
long-horns  which  preceded  them,  inferior 
for  beef  or  milk,  vanished  “ as  if  smitten 
by  a pestilence.”  The  fact  was  that,  being 
less  valuable,  their  owners  chose  to  destroy 
them  rather  than  the  finer  Durhams.  Thus 
the  new  stock  came  from  the  better  Dur- 
ham parentage.  If  conditions  should  ever 
be  reversed  and  the  Durhams  were  chosen 
for  destruction,  then  the  long-horns  might 
again  appear,  swelling  in  numbers  as  if  by 
magic,  unless  all  traces  of  the  breed  had  in 
the  meantime  been  annihilated. 

In  selective  breeding  with  any  domesti- 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


[43] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

cated  animal  or  plant,  it  is  possible,  with  a 
little  attention,  to  produce  wonderful 
changes  for  the  better.  Almost  anything 
may  be  accomplished  with  time  and 

Selective 

breeding 

patience.  To  select  for  posterity  those  in- 
dividuals which  best  meet  our  needs  or 
please  our  fancy,  and  to  destroy  those  with 
unfavorable  qualities,  is  the  function  of  arti- 
ficial selection.  Add  to  this  the  occasional 
crossing  of  unlike  forms  to  promote  new 
and  desirable  variations,  and  we  have  the 
whole  secret  of  selective  breeding.  This  pro- 
cess Youatt  calls  the  “ magician’s  wand  ” by 
which  man  may  summon  up  and  bring  into 
existence  any  form  of  animal  or  plant  use- 
ful to  him  or  pleasing  to  his  fancy. 

Among  the  greatest  triumphs  of  the  ap- 
plied science  of  our  times  is  the  creation  of 
new  plants,  of  new  fruits,  and  new  flowers, 
by  the  use  of  known  laws  of  heredity  and 
variation  by  the  skilful  hand  of  Luther  Bur- 
bank. There  is  nothing  magical  or  myste- 
rious in  all  this.  “ Like  the  seed  is  the  har- 
vest.” The  art  lies  in  choosing  the  right 
seed. 

[44] 

In  the  animal  world,  permanent  progress 

comes  mainly  through  selection,  natural  or 
artificial,  the  survival  of  the  fittest  to  be- 
come the  parent  of  the  new  generation.  In 
the  world  of  man  similar  causes  produce 
similar  results.  The  word  “progress”  is, 
however,  used  with  a double  meaning,  in- 
cluding the  advance  of  civilization  as  well 
as  race  improvement.  The  first  of  these 
meanings  is  entirely  distinct  from  the  other. 
The  results  of  training  and  education  lie 
outside  the  scope  of  the  present  discussion. 
By  training  the  force  of  the  individual  man 
is  increased.  Education  gives  him  access  to 
the  accumulated  stores  of  wisdom  built  up 
from  the  experience  of  ages.  The  trained 
man  is  placed  in  a class  relatively  higher 
than  the  one  to  which  he  would  belong  on 
the  score  of  heredity  alone.  Heredity  car- 
ries with  it  possibilities  for  effectiveness. 
Training  makes  these  possibilities  actual. 
Civilization  has  been  defined  as  “the  sum 
total  of  those  agencies  and  conditions  by 
which  a race  may  advance  independently  of 
heredity.”  But  while  education  and  civili- 
zation may  greatly  change  the  life  of  indi- 
viduals, and  through  them  that  of  the  nation, 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


Meaning 
of  P^g- 

ress 


[45] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

these  influences  are  spent  on  the  individual 
and  the  social  system  of  which  he  is  a part. 
So  far  as  science  knows,  education  and  train- 
ing play  no  part  in  heredity.  The  change 
in  the  blood  which  is  the  essence  of  race- 

Illustra- 
tions from 
France 

progress,  as  distinguished  from  progress  in 
civilization,  finds  its  cause  in  selection  only. 

To  apply  to  nations  and  races  of  men  the 
principles  we  know  to  be  valid  in  cattle- 
breeding  we  may  take  a concrete  example. 
Let  us  look  for  a moment  at  the  alleged 
decadence  of  France. 

Noblest  of  Roman  provinces  was  Gallia, 
the  favored  land,  in  which  the  best  of  the 
Romans,  the  Franks  and  the  Northmen 
have  mingled  their  blood  to  produce  a na- 
tion of  men,  hopefully  leaders  in  the  arts 
of  peace,  fatally  leaders  also  in  the  arts  of 
war. 

To-day  we  are  told  by  Frenchmen  that 
France  is  a decadent  nation.  This  is  a con- 
fession of  judgment,  not  an  accusation  of 
hostile  rivals.  It  does  not  mean  that  the 
slums  of  Paris  are  destructive  of  human  life. 

[46] 

That  we  know  elsewhere.  Each  great  city 
has  its  great  burdens,  and  these  fall  hard  on 

those  at  the  bottom  of  the  layers  of  society. 
There  is  degradation  in  all  great  cities,  but 
the  great  cities  are  not  the  whole  of  France; 
they  are  not  even  typical  of  the  life  of  France. 
It  is  claimed  that  the  decadence  is  deep- 
seated,  not  individual.  It  is  said  that  the 
birth-rate  is  steadily  falling ; that  the  aver- 
age stature  of  men  is  lower  by  two  inches 
at  least  than  it  was  a century  ago  ; that  the 
physical  force  is  less  among  the  peasants  at 
their  homes.  Legoyt  tells  us  that  “it  will 
take  long  periods  of  peace  and  plenty  before 
France  can  recover  the  tall  statures  mowed 
down  in  the  wars  of  the  republic  and  the 
first  empire.”  What  is  the  cause  of  all  this? 
Intemperence,  vice,  misdirected  education, 
bureaucracy,  and  the  rush  toward  ready- 
made careers  ? These  may  be  symptoms. 
They  are  not  causes.  They  are  signs  of  in- 
herited deficiencies  in  the  people  themselves. 
Edmond  Demolins  asks  in  that  clever  vol- 
ume of  his  : “ In  what  constitutes  the  supe- 
riority of  the  Anglo-Saxon  ? ” Before  we 
answer  this  let  us  inquire  in  what  consti- 
tutes the  inferiority  of  the  Latin  races?  If 
we  admit  this  inferiority  exists  in  any  de- 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


[47] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

gree,  and  if  we  answer  it  in  any  degree,  we 
find  in  the  background  the  causes  of  the  fall 
of  Greece,  the  fall  of  Rome,  the  fall  of  Spain. 
We  find  the  spirit  of  domination,  the  spirit 
of  glory,  the  spirit  of  war,  the  final  survival 
of  subserviency,  of  cowardice  and  of  steril- 
ity. The  man  who  is  left  holds  in  his  grasp 
the  history  of  the  future.  The  evolution  of 
a race  is  always  selective,  never  collective. 
Collective  evolution  among  men  or  beasts, 
the  movement  upward  or  downward  of  the 
whole  as  a whole,  irrespective  of  training  or 
selection,  is  never  a fact.  As  Lepouge  has 
said,  “ It  exists  in  rhetoric,  not  in  truth  nor 
in  history.” 

Demolins  finds  the  answer  to  his  question 
in  the  false  standards  of  French  life,  in  de- 
fects of  training  and  of  civic  and  personal 
ideals ; but  the  real  cause  lies  deeper  than 
all  this.  Low  ideals  in  education  are  devel- 

[48] 

oped  by  inferior  men.  The  school  of  “hand- 
painted  science,”  of  which  Dr.  MaxNordau 
is  the  ablest  exponent,  finds  France  a nation 
of  decadents,  — a condition  due  to  the  in- 
herited strain  of  an  overwrought  civiliza- 
tion. To  Nordau  the  word  “degenerate” 

is  found  adequate  to  explain  all  eccentrici- 
ties of  French  literature,  art,  politics,  or 
jurisprudence. 

But  in  fact  we  have  no  knowledge  of  the 
existence  of  such  a thing  as  nerve-stress  in- 
heritance. In  any  event,  the  peasantry  of 
France  have  not  been  subjected  to  it.  Their 
life  is  hard,  no  doubt,  but  not  stressful ; and 
they  suffer  more  from  nerve-sluggishness 
than  from  any  form  of  enforced  psychical 
activity.  The  kind  of  degeneration  Nordau 
pictures  is  not  a matter  of  heredity.  When 
not  simply  personal  eccentricity,  it  is  a phase 
of  personal  decay.  It  finds  its  causes  in  bad 
habits,  bad  training,  bad  morals,  or  in  the 
desire  to  catch  public  attention  for  personal 
advantage.  It  has  no  permanence  in  the 
blood  of  the  race.  The  presence  on  the 
Paris  boulevards  of  a mob  of  crazy  painters, 
maudlin  musicians,  drunken  poets,  and  sen- 
sation-mongers, proves  nothing  as  to  race 
degeneracy.  When  the  fashion  changes, 
they  will  change  also.  Already  the  fad  of 
“strenuous  life  ” is  blowing  them  away.  Any 
man  of  any  race  withers  in  an  atmosphere 
of  vice,  absinthe,  and  opium.  The  presence 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


[49] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


Heredity 
repeats 
what  she 
finds 

[50] 


of  such  an  atmosphere  may  be  an  effect  of 
race  decadence,  but  it  is  not  a cause  of  the 
lowered  tone  of  the  nation. 

Evil  influences  may  kill  the  individual, but 
they  cannot  tarnish  the  stream  of  heredity. 
The  child  of  each  generation  is  free-born  so 
far  as  heredity  goes,  and  the  sins  of  the 
fathers  are  not  visited  upon  him.  If  vice 
strikes  deeply  enough  to  wreck  the  man,  it 
is  likely  to  wreck  or  kill  the  child  as  well, 
not  through  heredity,  but  through  lack  of 
nutrition.  The  child  depends  on  its  parents 
for  its  early  vitality,  its  constitutional 
strength,  the  momentum  of  its  life,  if  we 
may  use  the  term.  For  this  a sound  parent- 
age demands  a sound  body.  The  unsound 
parentage  yields  the  withered  branches,  the 
lineage  which  speedily  comes  to  the  end. 
But  this  class  of  influences,  affecting  not  the 
germ-plasm,  but  general  vitality,  has  no  re- 
lation to  hereditary  qualities,  so  far  as  we 
know. 

In  heredity  there  can  be  no  natural  or  nec- 
essary tendency  downward  or  upward.  Na- 
ture repeats,  and  that  is  all.  It  is  not  what 
parents  actually  are,  — but  what  they  might 


have  been,  which  determines  the  course  of 
inheritance.  From  the  actual  parents  actual 
qualities  are  received,  the  traits  of  the  man 
or  woman  as  they  might  have  been,  with- 
out regard,  so  far  as  we  know,  to  the  way 
in  which  these  qualities  have  been  actually 
developed. 

No  race  as  a whole  can  be  made  up  of 
“ degenerate  sons  of  noble  sires.”  Where 
decadence  exists,  the  noble  sires  have  per- 
ished, either  through  evil  influences,  as  in 
the  slums  of  great  cities,  or  else  through  the 
movements  of  history  or  the  growth  of  in- 
stitutions. If  a nation  sends  forth  the  best 
it  breeds  to  destruction,  the  second  best 
will  take  their  vacant  places.  The  weak,  the 
vicious,  the  unthrifty  will  propagate,  and  in 
default  of  better  will  have  the  land  to  them- 
selves. 

We  may  now  see  the  true  significance  of 
the  “ Man  of  the  Hoe,”  as  painted  by  Mil- 
let, and  as  pictured  in  Edwin  Markham’s 
verse.  This  is  the  Norman  peasant,  low- 
browed, heavy-jawed,  “the  brother  of  the 
ox,”  gazing  with  lack-lustre  eye  on  the 
things  about  him.  To  a certain  extent  he  is 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


The  man 
of  the  Hoe 


[51] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

typical  of  a large  portion  of  the  French 
peasantry.  Every  one  who  has  travelled  in 
France  knows  well  his  kind.  If  it  should  be 
that  his  kind  is  increasing,  it  is  because  his 
betters  are  not.  It  is  not  that  his  back  is 
bent  by  centuries  of  toil.  He  was  not  born 
oppressed.  Heredity  carries  over  not  op- 
pression, but  those  qualities  of  mind  and 
heart  which  invite  or  which  defy  oppression. 
The  tyrant  harms  those  only  that  he  can 
reach.  The  new  generation  is  free-born,  and 
slips  from  his  hands,  unless  its  traits  be  of 
the  kind  which  demand  new  tyrants.  From 
ccthebeaten  members  of  the  beaten  races”  we 
cannot  count  on  breeding  free-born  men. 

Millet’s  “ Man  of  the  Hoe  ” is  not  the 
product  of  oppression,  whatever  may  be  the 
case  of  the  hoe-man  imagined  by  Markham. 
He  is  primitive,  aboriginal.  His  lineage  has 
always  been  that  of  the  clown  and  swine- 
herd. The  heavy  jaw  and  slanting  forehead 
can  be  found  in  the  oldest  mounds  and 

[52] 

tombs  of  France.  The  skulls  of  Engis  and 
Neanderthal  were  typical  men  of  the  hoe, 
and  through  the  days  of  the  Gauls  and  Ro- 
mans the  race  was  not  extinct.  The  “ lords 

and  masters  of  the  earth  ” can  prove  an  alibi 

The 

when  accused  of  the  fashioning  of  the  terri- 

Human 

ble  shape  of  this  primitive  man.  And  men 
of  this  shape  persist  to-day  in  regions  never 
invaded  by  our  social  or  political  tyranny, 
and  their  kind  is  older  than  any  existing 
social  order. 

Harvest 

That  he  is  “chained  to  the  wheel  of  labor” 

is  the  result,  not  the  cause,  of  his  impotence. 
In  dealing  with  him,  therefore,  we  are  far 
from  the  “ labor  problem  ” of  to-day,  far 
from  the  workman  brutalized  by  premature 
strain  and  by  unequal  competition  with  ma- 
chinery, and  from  all  the  wrongs  of  the  poor 
as  set  forth  in  the  conventional  literature  of 
sympathy. 

In  our  discussion  of  national  decadence 

The  sift- 

through  reversed  selection  we  turn  to 
France  simply  as  a convenient  illustration. 
Her  sins  have  not  been  always  greater  than 
those  of  other  lands,  nor  is  the  penalty  more 
significant.  Her  case  rises  to  our  hand  to 
illustrate  a principle  which  applies  to  all 
human  history  and  to  all  groups  of  plants 
and  animals  as  well  as  to  man.  Our  picture, 

ing  of  men 
in  France 

such  as  it  is,  must  be  painted  with  a broad 

[53] 

The 

Human 

Harvest 


The  nobles 
and  the 
peasantry 


[54] 


brush.  We  have  no  space  forexceptionsand 
qualifications,  and  these  again  when  under- 
stood would  only  prove  the  rule.  To 
weigh  statistics  is  impossible,  for  the  statis- 
tics we  need  have  never  been  collected.  The 
evil  effects  of  “military  selection”  and  allied 
causes  have  long  been  recognized  by  stu- 
dents of  social  evolution  ; but  the  ideas  de- 
rived from  the  application  of  Darwinism  to 
history  have  not  penetrated  our  current  lit- 
erature. 

The  survival  of  the  fittest  in  the  struggle 
for  existence  is  the  primal  cause  of  race- 
progress  and  race-changes.  But  in  the  red 
field  of  human  history  the  natural  process  of 
selection  is  often  reversed.  The  survival  of 
theunfittest  is  the  primal  cause  of  the  down- 
fall of  nations.  Let  us  see  in  what  ways  this 
cause  has  operated  in  the  history  of  France. 

First,  we  may  consider  the  relation  of  the 
nobility  to  the  peasantry, — the  second  to 
the  third  estate. 

The  feudal  nobility  of  each  nation  of  Eu- 
rope was  in  the  beginning  made  up  of  the 
fair,  the  brave,  and  the  strong.  By  their 
courage  and  strength  their  men  became  the 


rulers  of  the  people,  and  by  the  same  token 
they  chose  the  beauty  of  the  realm  to  be 
their  own. 

In  the  polity  of  England  this  superiority 
was  emphasized  by  the  law  of  primogeni- 
ture. On  “ inequality  before  the  law  ” Brit- 
ish polity  has  always  rested.  Men  have  tried 
to  take  a certain  few,  to  feed  these  on  “ roy- 
al jelly,”  as  the  young  queen-bee  is  fed,  and 
thus  to  raise  them  to  a higher  class,  distinct 
from  all  the  workers.  To  take  this  leisure 
class  out  of  the  struggle  and  competition  of 
life,  so  goes  the  theory,  is  to  make  the  first- 
born and  his  kind  harmonious  and  perfect 
men  and  women,  fit  to  lead  and  control  the 
social  and  political  life  of  the  state.  In  Eng- 
land the  eldest  son  is  chosen  for  this  pur- 
pose,— a good  arrangement,  according  to 
Samuel  Johnson,  “because  it  insures  that 
there  shall  be  only  one  fool  in  the  family.” 
F or  the  theory  of  the  leisure  class  forgets  that 
men  are  made  virile  by  effort  and  resistance, 
and  the  lord  developed  by  the  use  of“  royal 
jelly  ” has  rarely  been  distinguished  by  per- 
fection of  manhood. 

The  gain  of  primogeniture  came  to  the  na- 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


[55] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

Effects  of 
primoge- 
niture 


[56] 


tion,  though  not  to  the  individual.  It  lies 
in  the  fact  that  the  younger  sons  and  the 
daughters’  sons  were  forced  constantly  back 
into  the  mass  of  the  people.  Among  the  peo- 
ple at  large  this  stronger  blood  became  the 
dominantstrain.  The  Englishmen  of  to-day 
are  the  sons  of  the  old  nobility,  and  in  the 
stress  of  natural  selection  they  have  crowded 
out  the  children  of  the  swineherd  and  the 
slave.  The  evil  of  primogeniture  has  fur- 
nished its  own  antidote;  for  primogeniture 
begat  democracy.  The  younger  sons  in 
Cromwell’s  ranks  asked  on  their  battle-flags 
“Why  should  the  eldest  receive  all  and  we 
nothing?”  Richard  Rumbold,  whom  they 
slew  in  the  Bloody  Assizes,  “could  never 
believe  that  Providence  had  sent  into  the 
world  a few  men  already  booted  and  spurred, 
with  countless  millions  alreadv  saddled  and 
bridled  for  these  few'  to  ride.”  Thus  these 
younger  sons  became  the  Roundhead,  the 
Puritan,  the  Pilgrim.  They  swelled  Crom- 
well’s army,  they  knelt  at  Marston  Moor, 
they  manned  the  “ Mayflower,”  and  in  each 
generation  they  have  fought  for  liberty  in 
England  and  in  the  United  States.  Studies 


in  genealogy  show  that  all  this  is  literally 
true.  All  the  old  families  in  New  England 
and  Virginia  trace  their  lines  back  to  nobil- 
ity, and  thence  to  royalty.  Almost  every 
Anglo-American  has,  if  he  knew  it,  noble 
and  royal  blood  in  his  veins.  The  Massa- 
chusetts farmer,  whose  fathers  came  from 
Devon  or  Somerset,  has  as  much  of  the 
blood  of  the  Plantagenets,  of  William  and 
of  Alfred,  as  flows  in  any  royal  veins  in  Eu- 
rope. But  his  ancestral  line  passes  through 
the  working  and  fighting  younger  son,  not 
through  him  who  was  first  born  to  the  pur- 
ple. The  persistence  of  the  strong  shows 
itself  in  the  prevalence  of  the  leading  quali- 
ties of  her  dominant  strains  of  blood,  and 
it  is  well  for  England  that  her  gentle  blood 
flows  in  all  her  ranks  and  in  all  her  classes. 
When  we  consider  with  Demolins  “what 
constitutes  the  superiority  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon, ”we  shall  find  his  descent  from  the  old 
nobility,  “ Saxon  and  Norman  and  Dane,” 
not  the  least  of  its  factors. 

On  the  continent  of  Europe  the  law  of 
primogeniture  existed  in  less  force,  and  the 
results  were  very  distinct.  All  of  noble  blood 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


[57] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

were  continuously  noble.  All  belonged  to 
the  leisure  class.  All  were  held  on  the  backs 
of  a third  estate,  men  of  weaker  heredity, 
beaten  lower  into  the  dust  by  the  weight  of 
an  ever-increasing  body  of  nobility.  The 
blood  of  the  strong  rarely  mingled  with  that 
of  the  clown.  The  noblemen  were  brought 
up  in  indolence  and  ineffectiveness.  The 
evils  of  dissipation  wasted  their  individual 
lives,  while  casting  an  ever-increasing  burden 
on  the  villager  and  on  the  “ farmer  who  must 
pay  for  all.” 

Reversed 
selection 
of  the 
Reign  of 
Terror 

Hence  in  France  the  burden  of  taxation  led 
to  the  Revolution  and  its  Reign  of  Terror. 

I need  not  go  over  the  details  of  dissipation, 
intrigue,  extortion,  and  vengeance  which 
brought  to  sacrifice  the  “best  that  the  na- 
tion could  bring.”  In  spite  of  their  lust  and 
cruelty,  the  victims  of  the  Reign  of  Terror 
were  literally  thebest  from  the  standpoint  of 
race  development.  Their  weaknesses  were 
those  of  training  in  luxury  and  irresponsible 
power.  These  effects  were  individual  only ; 
and  their  children  were  free-born,  with  the 

[58] 

capacity  to  grow  up  truly  noble  if  removed 
from  the  evil  surroundings  of  the  palace. 

In  Thackeray’s  “ Chronicle  of  the  Drum,” 
the  old  drummer,  Pierre,  sunning  himself  at 
the  city  gate,  tells  the  story  of  the  Reign  of 
Terror : — 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

The  glorious  days  of  September 

Saw  many  aristocrats  fall ; 

’Twas  then  that  our  pikes  drank  the  blood 

In  the  beautiful  breast  of  Lamballe. 

Pardi,  ’twas  a beautiful  lady  ! 

I seldom  have  looked  on  her  like ; 

And  I drummed  for  a gallant  procession 

That  marched  with  her  head  on  a pike. 

The 

Chronicle 
of  the 

Drum 

Then  they  showed  her  pale  face  to  the 
Queen,  who  fell  fainting  to  the  floor. 

The  old  drummer  goes  on  with  the  story 
of  the  new  ruler  of  France,  “ La  Mere  Guil- 
lotine”: — 

Awful,  and  proud,  and  erect, 

Here  sat  our  republican  goddess. 

Each  morning  her  table  was  decked 

With  dainty  aristocrats’  bodies. 

The  people  each  day  flocked  around 

As  she  sat  at  her  meat  and  her  wine : 
’Twas  always  the  use  of  our  nation 

To  witness  the  sovereign  dine. 

[59] 

The 

Human 

Harvest 


Reversed 
selection 
through 
repression 
and  intol- 
erance 

[6o] 


Young  virgins  with  fair  golden  tresses, 

Old  silver-haired  prelates  and  priests, 
Dukes,  marquises,  barons,  princesses, 

Were  splendidly  served  at  her  feasts. 
Ventrebleu  ! but  we  pampered  our  ogress 
With  the  best  that  the  nation  could  bring , 
And  dainty  she  grew  in  her  progress, 

And  called  for  the  head  of  a king  ! 

Thus  the  slaughter  went  on  until  the  man 
on  horseback  came,  and  the  mob,  “alive 
but  most  reluctant,”  was  itself  forced  into 
the  graves  it  had  dug  for  others. 

And  since  that  day  the  “ best  that  the  na- 
tion could  bring,”  those  who  fell  in  the 
Reign  of  Terror,  have  been  without  de- 
scendants,— the  men  less  manly  than  the 
sons  of  the  Girondins  wrould  have  been,  the 
women  less  beautiful  than  the  daughters  of 
Lamballe.  The  political  changes  which 
arose  may  have  been  for  the  better ; the 
change  in  the  blood  w7as  all  for  the  wrorse. 

Other  influences  which  destroyed  the  best 
were  social  repression,  religious  intolerance 
and  the  intolerance  of  irreligion  and  un- 
science. It  was  the  atheist  mob  of  Paris 
which  destroyed  Lavoisier,  wdth  the  sneer 


that  the  new  republic  of  reason  had  no  use 
for  savants.  The  old  conservatism  burned 
the  heretic  at  the  stake,  banished  the  Hu- 
guenot, destroyed  the  lover  of  freedom,  si- 
lenced the  agitator.  Its  intolerance  gave 
Cuvier  and  Agassiz  to  Switzerland,  sent  the 
Le  Contes  to  America,  the  Jouberts  to 
Holland,  and  furnished  the  backbone  of 
the  fierce  democracy  of  the  Transvaal. 
While  not  all  agitators  are  sane,  and  not  all 
heretics  right-minded,  yet  no  nation  can 
spare  from  its  numbers  those  men  who 
think  for  themselves  and  those  who  act  for 
themselves.  It  cannot  afford  to  drive  away 
or  destroy  those  who  are  filled  with  religious 
zeal,  nor  those  whose  religious  zeal  takes 
a form  not  approved  by  tradition  nor  by 
consent  of  the  masses.  All  movements 
toward  social  and  religious  reform  are  signs 
of  individual  initiative  and  individual  force. 
The  country  which  stamps  out  individual- 
ity will  soon  live  in  the  mass  alone. 

A French  writer  has  claimed  that  the  de- 
cay of  religious  spirit  in  France  is  connected 
with  the  growth  of  religious  orders  of  which 
celibacy  is  a prominent  feature.  If  religious 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


Reversed 

selection 

through 

monasti- 

cism 

[6t] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


Reversed 
selection 
through 
abuse  of 
charity 


[62] 


men  and  women  leave  no  descendants,  their 
own  spirit,  at  least,  will  fail  of  inheritance. 
A people  careless  of  religion  inherit  this 
trait  from  equally  careless  ancestors. 

Indiscriminate  charity  has  been  a fruitful 
cause  of  the  survival  of  the  unfit.  To  kill 
the  strong  and  feed  the  weak  is  to  provide 
for  a progeny  of  weakness.  It  is  a French 
writer,  again,  who  says  that  “Charity  creates 
the  misery  she  tries  to  relieve;  she  can  never 
relieve  half  the  misery  she  creates.” 

Unwise  charity  is  responsible  for  half  the 
pauperism  of  the  world.  That  pauperism 
has  become  perpetual  is  due  in  part  to  the 
charity  that,  in  aiding  the  poor,  helps  pau- 
perism to  mate  with  pauperism.  It  is  the 
duty  of  true  charity  to  remove  the  causes 
of  weakness  and  suffering.  It  is  equally  her 
duty  to  see  that  weakness  and  suffering  are 
not  needlessly  perpetuated. 

Startling  results  may  follow  from  the  se- 
lective breeding  and  preservation  of  pau- 
pers. In  the  valley  of  Aosta  in  northern 
Italy,  and  in  other  Alpine  regions,  is  found 
the  form  of  idiocy  known  as  cretinism.  What 
is  the  primitive  cause  of  the  cretin , and  what 


is  the  causal  connection  of  cretinism  with  goi- 

The 

tre,  a disease  of  the  thyroid  glands  which 

Human 

always  accompanies  it,  I do  not  know. 

Harvest 

It  suffices  for  our  purpose  to  notice  that 

the  severe  military  selection  which  ruled  in 

Switzerland,  Savoy, and  Lombardy  for  many 

generations  took  the  strongest  and  health- 

iest  peasants  to  the  wars,  and  left  the  idiot 

and  goitrous  to  carry  on  the  affairs  of  life 

at  home.  To  bear  a goitre  was  to  be  exempt 

from  military  service.  Thus  in  some  regions 

the  disease  has  been  a local  badge  of  honor. 

It  is  said  that  when  iodine  lozenges  were 

given  to  the  children  of  Savoy  in  the  hope 

of  preventing  the  enlargement  and  degen- 

eration  of  the  thyroid  gland,  mothers  would 

take  this  remedy  away  from  the  boys,  pre- 

ferring  the  goitre  to  military  service. 

In  the  city  of  Aosta  the  goitrous  cretin  has 

been  for  centuries  an  object  of  charity. 

There  is  a special  hospice  or  asylum  de- 

voted  to  his  care  and  propagation.  The  idiot 

has  received  generous  support,  while  the 

poor  farmer  or  laborer  with  brains  and  no 

goitre  has  had  the  severest  of  struggles.  In 

the  competition  of  life  a premium  has  thus 

[63] 

The 

Human 

Harvest 


[64] 


been  placed  on  imbecility  and  disease.  The 
cretin  has  mated  with  the  cretin , the  goitre 
with  the  goitre,  and  charity  and  religion 
have  presided  over  the  union.  The  result  is 
that  idiocy  is  multiplied  and  intensified.  The 
cretin  of  Aosta  has  been  developed  as  a new 
type  of  man.  In  fair  weather  the  roads  about 
the  city  are  lined  with  these  awful  paupers 
— human  beings  with  less  intelligence  than 
the  goose,  with  less  decency  than  the  pig. 
The  asylum  for  cretins  in  Aosta  is  a veri- 
table chamber  of  horrors.  The  sharp  words 
of  Whymper  are  fully  justified:  — 

“ A large  proportion  of  the  cretins  who  will 
be  born  in  the  next  generation  will  undoubt- 
edly be  offsprings  of  cretin  parents.  It  is 
strange  that  self-interest  does  not  lead  the 
natives  of  Aosta  to  place  their  cretins  under 
such  restrictions  as  would  prevent  their  il- 
licit intercourse;  and  it  is  still  more  surpris- 
ing to  find  the  Catholic  Church  actually 
legalizing  their  marriage.  There  is  some- 
thing horribly  grotesque  in  the  idea  of  sol- 
emnizing the  union  of  a brace  of  idiots,  and, 
since  it  is  well  known  that  the  disease  is 
hereditary  and  develops  in  successive  gen- 


erations,  the  fact  that  such  marriages  are 
sanctioned  is  scandalous  and  infamous.” 
(Whymper:  Scrambles  among  the  Alps.) 

T rue  charity  would  give  these  creatures  not 
less  helpful  care,  but  a care  which  would 
guarantee  that  each  individual  cretin  should 
be  the  last  of  his  generation. 

The  causes  of  goitre  are  obscure,  perhaps 
depending  on  poor  nutrition  or  on  mineral 
substances  in  the  water.  The  disease  itself 
is  not  hereditary,  so  far  as  known;  but  sus- 
ceptibility to  it  certainly  is.  By  taking  away 
for  outside  service  those  who  are  resistant, 
the  heredity  of  tendency  to  goitrous  swell- 
ing is  fastened  on  those  who  remain. 

Like  these  mothers  in  Savoy  was  a mother 
in  Germany.  Not  long  since  a friend  of  the 
writer,  passing  through  a Franconian  forest, 
found  a young  man  lying  senseless  by  the 
way.  It  was  a young  recruit  for  the  army 
who  had  got  into  sometroublewith  his  com- 
rades. They  had  beaten  him  and  left  him 
lying  with  a broken  head.  Carried  to  his 
home,  his  mother  fell  on  her  knees  and 
thanked  God,  for  this  injury  had  saved  him 
from  the  army. 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


Sawed, 
from  the 
army 


[65] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

Alcohol- 
ism in 
race- 
selection 


[66] 


The  effect  of  alcoholic  drink  on  race-prog- 
ress should  be  considered  in  this  connec- 
tion. Authorities  do  not  agree  as  to  the  final 
result  of  alcohol  in  race-selection.  Doubt- 
less, in  the  long  run,  the  drunkard  will  be 
eliminated ; and  perhaps  certain  authors  are 
right  in  regarding  this  as  a gain  to  the  race. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  is  great  force  in 
Dr.  Amos  G.  Warner’s  remark,  that  of  all 
caustics  gangrene  is  the  most  expensive. 
The  people  of  southern  Europe  are  rela- 
tively temperate.  They  have  used  wine  for 
centuries,  and  it  is  thought  by  Dr.  Archdall 
Reid  and  others  that  the  cause  of  temper- 
ance is  to  be  found  in  this  long  use  of  alco- 
holic beverages.  All  those  with  vitiated  or 
uncontrollableappetiteshavebeendestroved 
in  the  long  experience  with  wine,  leaving 
only  those  with  normal  tastes  and  normal 
ability  of  resistance.  The  free  use  of  wine 
is,  therefore,  in  this  view,  a cause  of  final 
temperance,  while  intemperance  rages  only 
among  those  races  which  nave  not  long 
known  alcohol,  and  have  not  become  by 
selection  resistant  to  it.  The  savage  races 
which  have  never  knowm  alcohol  are  even 


less  resistant,  and  are  soonest  destroyed  by 
it. 

In  all  this  there  must  be  a certain  element 
of  truth.  The  view,  however,  ignores  the 
evil  effect  on  the  nervous  system  of  long 
continued  poisoning,  even  if  the  poison  be 
only  in  moderate  amounts.  The  temperate 
Italian,  with  his  daily  semi-saturation  may 
be  no  more  a normal  man  than  the  Scotch 
farmerwith  his  occasional  sprees.  Thenerve 
disturbance  which  wine  effects  is  an  evil, 
whether  carried  to  excess  in  regularity  or  ir- 
regularity. We  know  too  little  of  its  final 
result  on  the  race  to  give  certainty  to  our 
speculations.  It  is,moreover,  true  that  most 
excess  in  the  use  of  alcohol  is  not  due  to 
primitive  appetite.  It  is  drink  which  causes 
appetite,  and  not  appetite  which  seeks  for 
drink.  In  a given  number  of  drunkards  but 
a very  few  become  such  through  inborn  ap- 
petite. It  is  influence  of  bad  example,  lack 
of  courage,  false  idea  of  manliness,  or  some 
defect  in  character  or  misfortune  in  environ- 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

ment  which  leads  to  the  first  steps  in  drunk- 
enness. The  taste  once  established  grows 
of  itself.  In  earlier  times,  when  the  nature 

[67] 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

of  alcohol  was  unknown  and  total  absti- 
nence was  undreamed  of,  it  was  the  strong, 
the  boisterous,  the  energetic,  the  apostle  of 
“ the  strenuous  life,”  who  carried  all  these 
things  to  excess.  The  wassail  bowl,  the 
bumper  of  ale,  the  flagon  of  wine, — all 
these  were  the  attribute  of  the  strong.  We 
cannot  say  that  those  who  sank  in  alcohol- 
ism thereby  illustrated  the  survival  of  the 
fittest.  Who  can  say  that,  as  the  Latin  races 
became  temperate, they  did  not  also  become 
docile  and  weak  ? In  other  words,  consider- 
ing the  influence  of  alcohol  alone,  un- 
checked by  an  educated  conscience,  wre 
must  admit  that  it  is  the  strong  and  vigor- 
ous, not  the  weak  and  perverted,  that  are 
destroyed  by  it.  At  the  best,  we  can  only 
say  that  alcoholic  selection  is  a complex 
force  which  makes  for  temperance  — if  at 
all,  at  a fearful  cost  of  life  which,  without 

[68] 

alcoholic  temptation,  would  be  well  worth 
saving.  We  cannot  easily,  with  Mr.  Reid, 
regard  alcohol  as  an  instrument  of  race- 
purification,  nor  believe  that  the  growth  of 
abstinence  and  prohibition  only  prepares 
the  race  for  a future  deeper  plunge  into  dis- 

sipation.  If  France,  through  wine,  has  grown 
temperate,  she  has  grown  tame.  “New  Mi- 
rabeaus,”  Carlyle  tells  us,  “one  hears  not  of; 
the  wild  kindred  has  gone  out  with  this,  its 
greatest.”  This  fact,  whatever  the  cause,  is 
typical  of  great,  strong,  turbulent  men  who 
led  the  wild  life  of  Mirabeau  because  they 
knew  nothing  better. 

According  to  Mr.  John  O.  Varian,  in  the 
earlier  days  of  Ireland,  before  the  reasons 
for  temperance  came  to  be  better  under- 
stood, it  was  always  the  strong  and  active 
among  the  young  men  who  were  first  de- 
stroyed by  alcohol.  The  impulse  to  lead 
carried  these  into  the  greatest  excesses,  with 
the  nervous  disintegration  and  personal  de- 
cay which  is  the  natural  result  of  extreme 
nerve-stimulation. 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

The  concentration  of  the  energies  of 
France  in  the  one  great  city  of  Paris  is  again 
a potent  agency  in  the  impoverishment  of 
the  blood  of  the  rural  districts.  All  great 
cities  are  destroyers  of  life.  Scarcely  one 
would  hold  its  own  in  population  or  power, 
were  it  not  for  the  young  men  of  the  farms. 

Reversed 
selection 
through 
the  rush  to 
cities 

In  such  destruction,  Paris  has  ever  taken 

[69] 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

the  lead.  The  education  of  the  middle 
classes  of  France  is  almost  exclusively  a 
preparation  for  public  life.  To  be  an  official 
in  a great  city  is  an  almost  universal  ideal. 
This  ideal  but  few  attain,  and  the  lives  of 
the  rest  are  largely  wasted.  Not  only  the 
would-be  official,  but  artist,  poet,  physician, 
or  journalist,  seeks  his  careerin  Paris.  A few 
may  find  it.  The  others,  discouraged  by 
hopeless  effort  or  vitiated  by  corrosion, faint 
and  fall.  Every  night  some  few  of  these  cast 
themselves  into  the  Seine.  Every  morning 
they  are  brought  to  the  morgue  behind  the 
old  Church  of  Notre  Dame.  It  is  a long 
procession  and  a sad  one  from  the  provin- 
cial village  to  the  strife  and  pitfalls  of  the 
great  city, from  hopeand  joy  to  absintheand 
the  morgue.  With  all  its  pitiful  aspects  the 
one  which  concerns  us  is  the  steady  drain 
on  the  life-blood  of  the  nation,  its  steady 
lowering  of  the  average  of  the  parent  stock 
of  the  future. 

Reversed 

selection 

through 

vuar 

[70] 

But  far  more  potent  for  evil  to  the  race 
than  all  these  influences,  large  and  small,  is 
the  one  great  destroyer, — War.  War  for 
glory,  war  for  gain,  war  for  dominion,  war 

for  freedom,  its  effect  is  the  same,  whatever 
its  real  or  alleged  purpose. 

In  the  Wiertz  gallery  in  Brussels  is  a won- 
derful painting,  dating  from  the  time  of 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

Waterloo,  called  Napoleon  in  Hell.  It  rep- 
resents the  great  marshal  with  folded  arms 
and  face  unmoved  descending  slowly  to  the 
land  of  the  shades.  Before  him,  filling  all 
the  background  of  the  picture  with  every 
expression  of  countenance  are  the  men  sent 
before  him  by  the  unbridled  ambition  of 
Napoleon.  Three  millions  and  seventy 
thousand  there  were  in  all — so  history  tells 
us,  more  than  half  of  them  Frenchmen. 
They  are  not  all  shown  in  one  picture.  They 
are  only  hinted  at.  And  behind  the  millions 
shown  or  hinted  at  are  the  millions  on  mil- 

Wiert%  s 
painting 
of  Napo- 
leon 

lions  of  men  who  might  have  been  and  are 
not — the  huge  widening  human  wedge  of 
the  possible  descendants  of  the  men  who  fell 
in  battle.  These  men  of  Napoleon’s  armies 
were  the  youth  without  blemish,  “the  best 
that  the  nation  could  bring,”  “l’elite  de 
l’Europe,”  chosen  as  “food  for  powder,” 
“ere  evening  to  be  trampled  like  the  grass,” 
in  the  rush  of  Napoleon’s  great  battles. 

[71] 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

These  men  came  from  the  plow,  from  the 
workshop,  from  the  school,  the  best  there 
were  — those  from  eighteen  to  thirty-five 
years  of  age  at  first,  but  afterwards  the  older 
and  the  younger.  “ A boy  will  stop  a bullet 
as  well  as  a man.”  “ The  more  vigorous  and 
well  born  a young  man  is,”  says  Novicow,1 
“ the  more  normally  constituted,  the  greater 
his  chance  to  be  slain  by  musket  or  maga- 
zine, the  rifled  cannon  and  other  similar  en- 
gines of  civilization.”  Among  those  de- 
stroyed by  Napoleon  were  “the  elite  of 
Europe.”  “Napoleon,”  says  Otto  Seeck, 
“in  a series  of  years  seized  all  the  youth  of 
high  stature  and  left  them  scattered  over 
many  battle-fields,  so  that  the  French  peo- 
ple who  followed  them  are  mostly  men  of 
smaller  stature.  More  than  once  in  France 
since  Napoleon’s  time  has  the  military  limit 
been  lowered.” 

Napo- 
leon s 
campaigns 

I need  not  tell  again  the  story  of  Napo- 
leon’s campaigns.  It  began  with  the  first 

[72] 

1 “ La  Guerre  et  ses  Pretendus  Bienfaits,”  by  J. 
Novicow,  Paris.  1894.  This  little  book  contains  a 
specially  strong  arraignment  of  the  theory  and  practice 
of  war. 

consulate,  the  justice  and  helpfulness  of  the 

The 

Code  Napoleon,  the  prowess  of  the  brave 

Human 

lieutenant  whose  military  skill  and  intre- 

Harvest 

pidity  had  caused  him  to  deserve  well  of  his 

nation. 

The  spirit  of  freedom  gave  way  to  the  spirit 

of  domination.  The  path  of  glory  is  one 

which  descends  easily.  Campaign  followed 

campaign,  against  enemies,  against  neutrals, 

against  friends.  The  trail  of  glory  crossed 

the  Alps  to  Italy  and  to  Egypt,  crossed 

Switzerland  to  Austria,  crossed  Germany  to 

Russia.  Conscription  followed  victory,  and 

victory  and  conscription  debased  the  human 

species.  “ The  human  harvest  was  bad,."  The 

first  consul  became  the  emperor.  The  ser- 

vant  of  the  people  became  the  founder  of  the 

dynasty.  Again  conscription  after  conscrip- 

tion.  “Let  them  die  with  arms  in  their 

hands.  Their  death  is  glorious,  and  it  will 

be  avenged.  You  can  always  fill  the  places 

of  soldiers.”  These  were  Napoleon’s  words 

when  Dupont  surrendered  his  army  in  Spain 

to  save  the  lives  of  a doomed  battalion. 

With  all  this  came  more  conscription.  Af- 

ter  the  battle  of  Wagram,  we  are  told,  the 

[73] 

The 

Human 

Harvest 


[74] 


French  began  to  feel  their  weakness,  the 
Grand  Army  was  not  the  army  which  fought 
at  Ulm  and  Jena.  “Raw  conscripts  raised 
before  their  time  and  hurriedly  drafted  into 
the  line  had  impaired  its  steadiness.” 

On  to  Moscow,1  “amidst  ever-deepening 
misery  they  struggled  on,  until  of  the  six 
hundred  thousand  men  who  had  proudly 
crossed  the  Niemen  for  the  conquest  of 
Russia,  only  twenty  thousand  famished, 
frost-bitten,  unarmed  spectres  staggered 
across  the  bridge  of  Korno  in  the  middle 
of  December.” 

“Despite  the  loss  of  the  most  splendid  army 
marshalled  by  man,  Napoleon  abated  no 
whit  of  his  resolve  to  dominate  Germany 
and  discipline  Russia.  . . He  strained  every 
effort  to  call  the  youth  of  the  empire  to 
arms  . . . and  3 50,000  conscripts  were  prom- 
ised by  the  Senate.  The  mighty  swirl  of  the 
Moscow  campaign  sucked  in  150,000  lads 
of  under  twenty  years  of  age  into  the  de- 
vouring vortex.”  “The  peasantry  gave  up 
their  sons  as  food  for  cannon.”  But  “many 

1 These  quotations  are  from  the  “ History  of  Napo- 
leon I,”  by  J.  H.  Rose. 


were  appalled  at  the  frightful  drain  on  the 
nation’s  strength.”  “In  less  than  half  a year 
after  the  loss  of  half  a million  men  a new 
army  nearly  as  numerous  was  marshalled 
under  the  imperial  eagles.  But  the  major- 
ity were  young,  untrained  troops,  and  it  was 
remarked  that  the  conscripts  born  in  the 
year  of  Terror  had  not  the  stamina  of  the 
earlier  levies.  Brave  they  were,  superbly 
brave,  and  the  emperor  sought  by  every 
means  to  breathe  into  them  his  indomitable 
spirit.”  “Truly  the  emperor  could  make 
boys  heroes,  but  he  could  never  repair  the 
losses  of  1812.”  “Soldiers  were  wanting, 
youths  were  dragged  forth.”  The  human 
harvest  was  at  its  very  worst.  “To  fill  hell 
with  heroes,”  — in  these  words  some  one 
has  summed  up  the  life-work  of  the  great 
Napoleon. 

And  the  sequel  of  it  all  is  the  decadence 
of  France.  In  the  presence  of  war — of  war 
on  such  a mighty,  ruthless  and  ruinous  scale 
— one  does  not  have  to  look  far  to  find  in 
what  constitutes  the  superiority  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon.  And  we  see  the  truth  in 
Franklin’s  words,  the  deeper  truth  of  their 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


[75] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

deeper  wisdom : “ Men  do  not  pay  for  war 
in  war  time;  the  bill  comes  later.” 

Greece  died  because  the  men  who  made 

Fall  of 
Greece 

her  glory  had  all  passed  away  and  left  none 
of  their  kin  and  therefore  none  of  their  kind. 

“ ’Tis  Greece,  but  living  Greece  no  more”; 
for  the  Greek  of  to-day,  for  the  most  part, 
never  came  from  the  loins  of  Leonidas  or 
Miltiades.  He  is  the  son  of  the  stable- 
boys  and  scullions  and  slaves  of  the  day  of 
her  glory,  those  of  whom  imperial  Greece 
could  make  no  use  in  her  conquest  of  Asia. 
“Most  of  the  old  Greek  race,”  says  Mr.  W. 
H.  Ireland,  “ has  been  swept  away,  and  the 
country  is  now  inhabited  bv  persons  of  Sla- 
vonic descent.  Indeed,  there  is  strong 
ground  for  the  statement  that  there  was 
more  of  the  old  heroic  blood  of  Hellas  in 
the  turkish  army  of  Edhem  Pasha  than  in 
the  soldiers  of  King  George,  who  fled  before 
them  three  years  ago.”  King  George  him- 
self is  only  an  alien  placed  on  the  Grecian 
throne  to  suit  the  convenience  of  the  out- 
side powers,  which  to  the  ancient  Greeks 
were  merely  factions  of  barbarians. 

[76] 

Earth,  render  back  from  out  thy  breast 
A remnant  of  thy  Spartan  dead  ! 

Of  the  three  hundred  grant  but  three 
To  make  a new  Thermopylae  ! 

But  there  were  not  even  three  — not  even 
one — “to  make  another  Marathon,”  and 
the  Turkish  troops  swept  over  the  historic 
country  with  no  other  hindrance  than  the 
effortless  deprecation  of  Christendom. 

In  the  fall  of  Greece, as  in  the  fall  of  Rome, 
the  primal  elements  we  may  easily  find. 
The  extinction  of  manly  blood,  the  extinc- 
tion of  freedom  of  thought  and  action,  in- 
crease of  wealth  gained  by  plunder,  loss  of 
national  existence. 

So  fell  Greece  and  Rome,  Carthage  and 
Egypt,  the  Arabs  and  the  Moors,  because, 
their  warriors  dying,  the  nation  bred  real 
men  no  more.  The  man  of  the  strong  arm 
and  the  quick  eye  gave  place  to  the  slave, 
the  pariah,  the  man  with  the  hoe,  whose  lot 
changes  not  with  the  change  of  dynasties. 

Other  nations  of  Europe  may  furnish  il- 
lustrations in  greater  or  less  degree.  Ger- 
many guards  her  men  and  reduces  the  waste 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


The  case 
of  Ger- 
many 

[77] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

of  war  to  a minimum.  She  is  “military,  but 
not  warlike”;  and  this  distinction  means  a 
great  deal  from  the  point  of  view  of  this 
discussion.  In  modern  times  the  greatest 
loss  of  Germany  has  been  not  from  war, 
but  from  emigration.  If  the  men  who  have 
left  Germany  are  of  higher  type  than  those 
who  remain  at  home,  then  the  blood  of  the 

Effects  of 
emigra- 
tion 

nation  is  impoverished.  That  this  is  the 
case  the  Germans  in  Germany  are  usually 
not  willing  to  admit.  On  the  other  hand, 
those  competent  to  judge  the  German- 
American  find  no  type  of  men  in  the  Old 
World  his  mental  or  physical  superior. 

The  tendency  of  emigration,  whether  to 
cities  or  to  other  countries,  is  to  weaken  the 
rural  population.  An  illustration  of  the  re- 
sults of  checking  this  form  of  selection  is 
seen  in  the  Bavarian  town  of  Oberam- 

[78] 

mergau.  This  little  village,  with  a popula- 
tion not  exceeding  fifteen  hundred,  has  a 
surprisingly  large  number  of  men  possessing 
talent,  mental  and  physical  qualities  far 
above  the  average  even  in  Germany.  The 
cause  of  this  lies  in  the  Passion  Play,  for 
which  for  nearly  three  centuries  Oberam- 

mergau  has  been  noted.  The  best  intellects 
and  the  noblest  talents  that  arise  in  the 
town  find  full  scope  for  their  exercise  in  this 
play.  Those  who  are  idle,  vicious,  or  stupid 
are  excluded  from  it.  Thus,  in  the  long  run, 
the  operation  of  selection  is  to  retain  those 
whom  the  play  can  use  and  to  exclude  all 
others.  To  weigh  the  force  of  this  selected 
heredity,  we  have  only  to  compare  the 
quality  of  Oberammergau  with  that  of  other 
Bavarian  towns,  as,  for  example,  her  sister 
village  of  Unterammergau,  some  two  miles 
lower  down,  in  the  same  valley. 

The  effects  of  emigration  run  parallel  with 
the  effects  of  war,  but  with  this  enormous 
difference:  the  strong  men  who  emigrate 
are  not  lost  to  the  world.  The  loss  of  one 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

region  is  the  gain  of  another.  But  the  losses 
in  war  can  yield  no  corresponding  gain. 

The  effects  of  emigration  can  be  well 
studied  in  England.  From  Devon  and 
Somerset  arose  the  colony  of  Massachusetts 
Bay.  From  the  loins  of  Old  England  arose 
our  New  England,  and  from  the  germ  of 
self-governing  New  England  arose  the 
United  States.  The  counties  of  Devon  and 

[79] 

The 

Human 

Harvest 


“ What 
does  he 
know  of 
England 
who  only 
England 
knows?" 


Ehecaseof 

Switzer- 

land 


[8o] 


Somerset  have  no  importance  in  the  Eng- 
land of  to-day  comparable  with  the  part  they 
played  in  the  days  of  Queen  Elizabeth. 
Their  influence  is  over  the  seas,  with  the 
young  men  who  carried  with  them  the 
names  of  Plymouth  and  Dartmouth,  of  Ex- 
eter and  Taunton,  of  Bristol  and  Bath  and 
Barnstaple. 

If  we  could  imagine  this  New  England 
stock  in  all  its  ramifications  restored  to  its 
old  home  in  Devon  and  Somerset,  what  a 
wonderful  storehouse  of  active  life  these 
sleepy  old  counties  would  become  ! From 
every  county  of  England  strong  men  have 
gone  out  to  conquer  and  populate  the  world. 
The  influence  of  this  greater  England  on 
the  movement  of  civilization  in  our  day  far 
exceeds  that  of  the  England  at  home. 
“ What  does  he  know  of  England  who  only 
England  knows?” 

No  stronger  line  than  this  was  ever  written 
in  definition  of  England’s  greatness. 

Switzerland  is  the  land  of  freedom,  the 
land  of  peace.  But  in  earlier  times  some  of 
the  thrifty  cantons  sent  forth  their  men  as 
hireling  soldiers  to  serve  for  pay  under  the 


flag  of  whomsoever  might  pay  their  cost. 

The 

There  was  once  a proverb  in  the  French 

Human 

court,  “ Pas  d' argent,  pas  de  Suisses”  (No 

Harvest 

money,  no  Swiss);  for  the  agents  of  the  free 

republic  drove  a close  bargain. 

In  Lucerne  stands  the  noblest  of  all  mon- 

uments  in  all  the  world,  the  memorial  of  the 

Swiss  guard  of  Louis  XVI,  killed  by  the 

mob  at  the  palace  of  Versailles.  It  is  carved 

in  the  solid  rock  of  a vertical  cliff  above  a 

great  spring  in  the  outskirts  of  the  city, — 

a lion  of  heroic  size,  a spear  thrust  through 

its  body,  guarding  in  its  dying  paws  the 

Bourbon  lilies  and  the  shield  of  France. 

And  the  traveller,  Carlyle  tells  us,  should 

visit  Lucerne  and  her  monument,  cc  not  for 

Thorwaldsen’s  sake  alone,  but  for  the  sake 

of  the  German  Biederkeit  and  Tapferkeit, 

the  valor  which  is  worth  and  truth,  be  it 

Saxon,  be  it  Swiss.” 

Beneath  the  lion  are  the  names  of  those 

whose  devotion  it  commemorates.  And 

with  the  thought  of  their  courage  comes  the 

thought  of  the  pity  of  it,  the  waste  of  brave 

life  in  a world  that  has  need  for  it  all.  “Sons 

of  the  men  who  knelt  at  Sempach,  but  not 

[81] 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

to  thee,  O Burgundy.”  Switzerland  has 
need  of  more  such  sons.  It  may  be  fancy, 
but  it  seems  to  me  that,  as  I go  about  in 
Switzerland,  I can  distinguish  by  the  char- 
acter of  the  men  who  remain  those  cantons 
who  sent  forth  mercenary  troops  from  those 
who  kept  their  own  for  their  own  upbuild- 
ing. Perhaps  for  other  reasons  than  this 
Lucerne  is  weaker  than  Graubiinden,  and 
U nterwaldenless  virile  than  little  Appenzell. 
In  any  event,  this  is  absolutely  certain  : just 
in  proportion  to  its  extent  and  thorough- 
ness is  military  selection  a cause  of  national 
decline.1 

'The  case 
of  Spain 

Spain  died  of  empire  centuries  ago.  She 
has  never  crossed  our  path.  It  was  only  her 
ghost  which  walked  at  Manila  and  Santiago. 
In  1630  the  Augustinian  friar  La  Puente 
thus  wrote  of  the  fate  of  Spain:  “Against 
the  credit  for  redeemed  souls  I set  the  cost 
of  armadas  and  the  sacrifice  of  soldiers  and 
friars  sent  to  the  Philippines.  And  this  I 
count  the  chief  loss;  for  mines  give  silver, 

[82] 

1 “Lors  de  la  guerre  de  Paraguay  la  population  virile  dis- 
parut  presque  completement,  et  il  ne  resta  que  les  malades 
et  les  infirmes  ” (E.  Reclus). 

and  forests  give  timber,  but  only  Spain  gives 
Spaniards,  and  she  may  give  so  many  that 
she  may  be  left  desolate,  and  constrained  to 
bring  up  strangers’  children  instead  of  her 
own.”  “This  is  Castile,”  said  a Spanish 
knight;  “she  makes  men  and  wastes  them.” 
“This  sublime  and  terrible  phrase,”  says 
Captain  Carlos  Gilman  Calkins,  from  whom 
I have  received  both  these  quotations, 
“sums  up  Spanish  history.” 

The  warlike  nation  of  to-day  is  the  deca- 
dent nation  of  to-morrow.  It  has  ever  been 
so,  and  in  the  nature  of  things  it  must  ever 
be. 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


In  his  charming  studies  of  “Feudal  and 
Modern  Japan,”  Mr.  Arthur  Knapp,  of 
Yokohama,  returns  again  and  again  to  the 
great  marvel  of  Japan’s  military  prowess 
after  more  than  two  hundred  years  of  peace. 
This  was  shown  in  the  Chinese  war.  It  has 
been  more  conclusively  shown  on  the  fields 
of  Manchuria  since  Mr.  Knapp’s  book  was 
written.  It  is  astonishing  to  him  that,  after 
more  than  six  generations  in  which  physi- 
cal courage  has  not  been  demanded,  these 
virile  virtues  should  be  found  unimpaired. 


The 

greatness 
of  Japan 


[83] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

We  can  readily  see  that  this  is  just  what  we 
should  expect.  In  times  of  peace  there  is 
no  slaughter  of  the  strong,  no  sacrifice  of 
the  courageous.  In  the  peaceful  struggle  for 
existence  there  is  a premium  placed  on  these 
virtues.  The  virile  and  the  brave  survive. 
The  idle,  weak,  and  dissipated  go  to  the 
wall.  “What  won  the  battles  on  the  Yalu, 
in  Korea  or  Manchuria,”  says  the  Japanese, 
Nitobe,  was  the  ghosts  of  our  fathers  guid- 
ing our  hands  and  beating  in  our  hearts. 
They  are  not  dead,  these  ghosts,  those  spir- 
its of  our  warlike  ancestors.  Scratch  a Japa- 
nese, even  one  of  the  most  advanced  ideas, 
and  you  will  find  a Samurai.”  If  we  trans- 
late this  from  the  language  of  Shintoism  to 
that  of  science  we  find  it  a testimony  to  the 
strength  of  race-heredity,  the  survival  of  the 
ways  of  the  strong  in  the  lives  of  the  self- 
reliant. 

If  after  two  hundred  years  of  incessant 
battle  Japan  still  remained  virile  and  war- 
like, that  would  indeed  be  the  marvel.  But 
that  marvel  no  nation  has  ever  seen.  It  is 
doubtless  true  that  warlike  traditions  are 

[84] 

most  persistent  with  nations  most  frequently 

engaged  in  war.  But  the  traditions  of  war 

The 

and  the  physical  strength  to  gain  victories 

Human 

are  very  different  things.  Other  things  be- 

Harvest 

ing  equal,  the  nation  which  has  known  least 

of  war  is  the  one  most  likely  to  develop  the 

“strong  battalions”  with  whom  victory 

must  rest. 

As  Americans  we  are  more  deeply  inter- 

What  of 

ested  in  the  fate  of  our  mother-country  than 

England P 

in  that  of  the  other  nations  of  Europe. 

What  shall  we  say  of  England  and  of  her 

relation  to  the  reversed  selection  of  war  ? 

Statistics  we  have  none  and  no  evidence  of 

tangible  decline  that  Englishmen  will  not 

indignantly  repudiate.  When  the  London 

press  in  the  vacation  season  fills  its  columns 

with  editorials  on  English  degeneration,  it 

is  something  else  to  which  these  journalists 

refer.  Their  problem  is  that  of  the  London 

slums,  of  sweat-shops  and  child-labor,  of 

wasting  overwork  and  of  lack  of  nutrition,  of 

premature  old  age  and  of  sodden  drunk- 

enness,  — influences  which  bring  about  the 

degeneration  of  the  individual,  the  ineffi- 

ciency  of  the  social  group,  but  which  for  the 

most  part  leave  no  trace  in  heredity  and  are 

[85] 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

therefore  no  factor  in  the  degeneration  of 
the  race.  Such  degradation  is  at  once  cause, 
effect  and  symptom,  — a sign  of  racial  inad- 
equacy, a cause  of  further  enfeeblement  and 
an  effect  of  unjust  and  injurious  social,  po- 
litical, and  industrial  conditions  in  the  past. 
But  with  better  training  the  child  of  the 
slums  rises  to  normal  conditions.  Given  a 
fair  chance  in  his  youth,  and  he  will  show 
his  normal  British  heritage. 

But  the  problem  before  us  is  not  the  prob- 
lem of  the  slums.  What  mark  has  been  left 
on  England  by  her  great  struggles  for  free- 
dom and  by  the  thousand  petty  struggles  to 
impose  on  the  world  the  semblance  of  order 
called  “ Pax  Britannica,”  the  British  peace  ? 

To  one  who  travels  widely  through  the 
counties  of  England  some  part  of  the  cost 
is  plain. 

There' s 
a <wido<w 
in  sleepy 
Chester 

There’s  a widow  in  sleepy  Chester 

Who  mourns  for  her  only  son  ; 

There’s  a grave  by  the  Pabeng  River, — 

A grave  which  the  Burmans  shun. 

[86] 

This  is  a condition  repeated  in  every  vil- 
lage of  England,  and  its  history  is  recorded 

on  the  walls  of  every  parish  church.  Every- 
where can  be  seen  tablets  in  memory  of 
young  men,  — gentlemen’s  sons  from  Eton 
and  Rugby  and  Winchester  and  Harrow, 
scholars  from  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  who 
have  given  up  their  lives  in  some  far-off  petty 
war.  Their  bodies  rest  in  Zululand,  in  Cam- 
bodia, in  the  Gold  Coast,  in  the  Transvaal. 
In  England  only  they  are  remembered.  In 
the  parish  churches  these  records  are  num- 
bered by  the  score.  In  the  cathedrals  they 
are  recorded  by  the  thousand.  Go  from  one 
cathedral  town  to  another — Canterbury, 
Winchester,  Chichester,  Exeter,  Salisbury, 
Wells,  Ely, York,  Lincoln,  Durham,  Litch- 
field, Chester  (what  a wonderful  series  of  pic- 
tures this  list  of  names  calls  up  ! ),  and  you 
will  find  always  the  same  story,  the  same  sad 
array  of  memorials  to  young  men.  What 
would  be  the  effect  on  England  if  all  of  these 
“unreturning  brave”  and  all  that  should 
have  been  their  descendants  could  be  num- 
bered among  her  sons  to-day?  Doubtless 
not  all  of  these  were  young  men  of  charac- 
ter. Doubtless  not  all  are  worthy  even  of 
the  scant  glory  of  a memorial  tablet.  But 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


[87] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

most  of  them  were  worthy.  Most  of  them 

were  brave  and  true,  and  most  of  them 

looked  out  on  life  with  “frank  blue  British 
>> 

eyes. 

This  too  we  may  admit,  that  war  is  not 
the  only  destructive  agency  in  modern  so- 
ciety, and  that  in  the  struggle  for  existence 
the  England  of  to-day  has  had  many  advan- 
tages which  must  hide  or  neutralize  the 
waste  of  war. 

In  default  of  facts  unquestioned,  we  may 
appeal  to  the  poets,  letting  their  testimony 
as  to  the  reversal  of  selection  stand  for  what 
it  is  worth. 

Testimony 
of  Kipling 

Rudyard  Kipling  is  the  poet  of  imperial- 
ism ; and  as  to  the  cost  of  it  all,  we  may  well 
heed  his  testimony.  This  he  says  of  the  rule 
of  the  sea : — 

[88] 

We  have  fed  our  sea  for  a thousand  years, 

And  she  calls  us,  still  unfed; 

Though  there’s  never  a wave  of  all  her  waves 
But  marks  our  English  dead. 

We’ve  strawed  our  best  to  the  waves’  unrest, 

To  the  shark  and  the  sheering  gull. 

If  blood  be  the  price  of  Admiralty, 

Lord  God,  we  ha’  paid  it  in  full! 

There’s  never  a flood  goes  shoreward  now 
But  lifts  some  keel  we  have  manned; 

There’s  never  an  ebb*  goes  seaward  now 
But  drops  our  dead  on  the  sand, 

But  slinks  our  dead  on  the  sands  forlore, 

From  the  Ducies  to  the  Swin, 

If  blood  be  the  price  of  Admiralty, 

Lord  God,  we  ha’  paid  it  in! 

We  must  feed  our  sea  for  a thousand  years, 

For  that  is  our  doom  and  pride, 

As  it  was  when  they  sailed  with  the  Golden  Hind 
Or  the  wreck  that  struck  last  tide; 

Or  the  wreck  that  lies  on  the  spouting  reef 
When  the  ghastly  blue-lights  flare: 

If  blood  be  the  price  of  Admiralty, 

Lord  God,  we  ha’  bought  it  fair! 

Again,  referring  to  dominion  on  land,  Kip- 
ling warns  the  British  soldier:  — 

Walk  wide  o’  the  widow  at  Windsor, 

For  ’alf  o’  creation  she  owns: 

We  ’ave  bought  ’er  the  same  with  the  sword 
an’  the  flame, 

An’  we’ve  salted  it  down  with  our  bones. 
(Poor  beggars!  — it’s  blue  with  our  bones!) 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


The 

Widow  at 
Windsor 


[89] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

Older  and  more  intense  is  “The  Revelry  of 
the  Dying  ” of  Bartholomew  Dowling,  — a 
bit  of  burning  verse  which  was  sung  at  the 
banquet  of  death  in  which  Dowling  himself 
was  one  of  the  first  that  died : — 

The 
Revelry 
of  the 
Dying 

We  have  met  ’neath  the  sounding  rafter, 

But  the  walls  around  are  bare: 

They  ring  to  our  peals  of  laughter, 

But  we  know  that  the  dead  are  there. 

So  stand  to  your  glasses  steady, 

We  drink  to  our  comrades’  eyes: 

Here’s  a cup  to  the  dead  already, 

And  huzza  for  the  next  that  dies! 

There’s  a mist  in  the  glass  congealing, — 

’Tis  the  hurricane’s  fiery  breath; 

And  ’tis  thus  that  the  warmth  of  feeling 

Turns  cold  in  the  grasp  of  death. 

[90] 

Cut  off  from  the  land  that  bore  us, 

Betrayed  by  the  land  we  find, 

When  the  brightest  are  gone  before  us, 

And  the  dullest  are  left  behind. 

So  stand  to  your  glasses  steady, 

Tho’  a moment  the  color  flies; 

Here’s  a cup  to  the  dead  already, 

And  huzza  for  the  next  that  dies! 

In  the  same  vein  is  the  dirge  sung  in  Lee’s 
Army  in  Virginia  when  General  Pelham 
died:  — 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

Oh,  band  in  the  pine-wood,  cease! 

Cease  with  your  splendid  call! 

The  living  were  brave  and  noble, 

The  dead  were  bravest  of  all! 

They  throng  to  the  martial  summons, 

To  the  loud  triumphant  strain, 

And  the  dear  bright  eyes  of  long-dead  friends 
Come  to  the  heart  again. 

They  come  with  the  ringing  bugle 

And  the  deep  drum’s  mellow  roar, 

Till  the  soul  is  faint  with  longing 

For  the  hands  we  clasp  no  more! 

Oh,  band  in  the  pine-woods,  cease! 

Or  the  heart  will  melt  in  tears, 

For  the  gallant  eyes  and  the  smiling  lips 

And  the  voices  of  old  years! 

Through  all  this  we  have  the  same  refrain, 
the  minor  chord  of  victory,  the  hidden  lesson 
of  war. 

The  Band 
in  the 

Pine- 

Wood 

1 By  John  Esten  Cooke. 

[91] 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

The  brightest  are  gone  before  us , 

The  dullest  are  left  behind. 

The  living  are  brave  and  noble , 

The  dead  were  bravest  of  all ! 

The  kindly  seasons  love  us, 

They  smile  over  trench  and  clod; 

Where  we  left  the  bravest  of  us 

There’s  a deeper  green  of  the  sod. 

The  Song 
of  the 
Dead 

Once  more  Kipling:  — 

Hear  now  the  Song  of  the  Dead  in  the  North 
by  the  torn  berg-edges: 

They  that  look  still  to  the  pole  asleep  by  their 
hide-stripped  sledges. 

Song  of  the  Dead  in  the  South,  in  the  sun  by 
their  skeleton  horses, 

When  the  warrigal  whimpers  and  bays  through 
the  dust  of  the  sere  river-courses. 

[92] 

Song  of  the  Dead  in  the  East,  in  the  heat- 
rotted  jungle  hollows, 

When  the  dog-ape  barks  in  the  kloof,  in  the 
brake  of  the  buffalo-wallows. 

Song  of  the  Dead  in  the  West,  in  the  barrens, 

The 

the  waste  that  betrayed  them, 

Human 

When  the  wolverene  tumbles  their  packs  from 

Harvest 

the  camp  and  the  grave-mound  they  made 

them. 

And  these  lines  of  Mrs.  Browning  : — 

Dead,  one  of  them  dead  by  the  sea  in  the 

East, 

And  one  of  them  dead  in  the  West  by  the 

sea ; 

Dead  both  of  my  boys,  and  ye  sit  at  your  feast, 

And  you  want  a new  song  for  your  Italy 

free, — 

Let  none  look  at  me  ! 

In  the  stately  “Ave  Imperatrix”  of  Oscar 

Ave 

Wilde  there  are  very  noble  lines  which  ought 

Impera- 

trix 

not  to  be  forgotten,  whatever  our  feeling  to- 

ward  the  wretched  life  of  their  author : — 

Set  in  this  stormy  northern  sea, 

Queen  of  these  restless  fields  of  tide, 

England!  what  shall  men  say  of  thee , 

Before  whose  feet  the  worlds  divide? 

The  earth,  a brittle  globe  of  glass, 

Lies  in  the  hollow  of  thy  hand, 

And  through  its  heart  of  crystal  pass, 

Like  shadows  through  a twilight  land, 

[93] 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

The  spears  of  crimson-suited  war, 

The  long  white-crested  waves  of  light, 

And  all  the  deadly  fires  which  are 

The  torches  of  the  lords  of  Night. 

The  yellow  leopards,  strained  and  lean, 

The  treacherous  Russian  knows  so  well, 
With  gaping,  blackened  jaws  are  seen 

Leap  through  the  hail  of  screaming  shell. 

The  strong  sea-lion  of  England’s  wars 

Hath  left  his  sapphire  cave  of  sea, 

To  battle  with  the  storm  that  mars 

The  star  of  England’s  chivalry. 

The  brazen-throated  clarion  blows 

Across  the  Pathan’s  reedy  fen, 

And  the  high  steeps  of  Indian  snows 

Shake  to  the  tread  of  armed  men. 

And  many  an  Afghan  chief,  who  lies 

Beneath  his  cool  pomegranate-trees, 
Clutches  his  sword  in  fierce  surmise 

When  on  the  mountain-side  he  sees 

[94] 

The  fleet-footed  Marri  scout,  who  comes 

To  tell  how  he  hath  heard  afar 

The  measured  roll  of  English  drums 

Beat  at  the  gates  of  Kandahar. 

For  southern  wind  and  east  wind  meet 

Where,  girt  and  crowned  by  sword  and  fire, 
England  with  bare  and  bloody  feet 

Climbs  the  steep  road  of  wide  empire. 

O lonely  Himalayan  height, 

Gray  pillar  of  the  Indian  sky, 

Where  sawest  thou  in  clanging  fight 

Our  winged  dogs  of  Victory? 

The  almond  groves  of  Samarcand, 

Bokhara,  where  red  lilies  blow, 

And  Oxus,  by  whose  yellow  sand 

The  grave  white-turbaned  merchants  go: 

And  on  from  thence  to  Ispahan, 

The  gilded  garden  of  the  sun, 

Whence  the  long  dusty  caravan 

Brings  cedar  and  vermilion; 

And  that  dread  city  of  Cabool, 

Set  at  the  mountain’s  scarped  feet, 

Whose  marble  tanks  are  ever  full 

With  water  for  the  noonday  heat; 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

Where  through  the  narrow  straight  Bazaar 

A little  maid  Circassian 

Is  led,  a present  from  the  Czar 

Unto  some  old  and  bearded  khan  — 

[95] 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

Here  have  our  wild  war-eagles  flown, 

And  flapped  wide  wings  in  fiery  fight; 

But  the  sad  dove,  that  sits  alone 

In  England  — she  hath  no  delight. 

In  vain  the  laughing  girl  will  lean 

To  greet  her  love  with  love-lit  eyes; 

Down  in  some  treacherous  black  ravine, 
Clutching  his  flag,  the  dead  boy  lies. 

And  many  a moon  and  sun  will  see 

The  lingering  wistful  children  wait 

To  climb  upon  their  father’s  knee; 

And  in  each  house  made  desolate, 

Pale  women  who  have  lost  their  lord 

Will  kiss  the  relics  of  the  slain  — 

Some  tarnished  epaulet  — some  sword  — 

Poor  toys  to  soothe  such  anguished  pain. 

For  not  in  quiet  English  fields 

Are  these,  our  brothers,  lain  to  rest, 

Where  we  might  deck  their  broken  shields 
With  all  the  flowers  the  dead  love  best. 

[96] 

For  some  are  by  the  Delhi  walls, 

And  many  in  the  Afghan  land, 

And  many  where  the  Ganges  falls 

Through  seven  mouths  of  shifting  sand. 

And  some  in  Russian  waters  lie, 

And  others  in  the  seas  which  are 
The  portals  to  the  East,  or  by 

The  wind-swept  heights  of  Trafalgar. 

O wandering  graves!  O restless  sleep! 

O silence  of  the  sunless  day! 

O still  ravine!  O stormy  deep! 

Give  up  your  prey!  Give  up  your  prey! 

And  t-hou  whose  wounds  are  never  healed, 
Whose  weary  race  is  never  won, 

O Cromwell’s  England!  must  thou  yield 
For  every  inch  of  ground  a son? 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


Go!  crownwith  thorns  thy  gold-crownedhead, 
Change  thy  glad  song  to  song  of  pain; 
Wind  and  wild  wave  have  got  thy  dead, 

And  will  not  yield  them  back  again. 

Wave  and  wild  wind  and  foreign  shore 
Possess  the  flower  of  English  land  — 

Lips  that  thy  lips  shall  kiss  no  more, 

Hands  that  shall  never  clasp  thy  hand. 


What  profit  now  that  we  have  bound 

The  whole  round  world  with  nets  of  gold, 
If  hidden  in  our  heart  is  found 
The  care  that  groweth  never  old? 


[97] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

What  profit  that  our  galleys  ride, 
Pine-forest-like,  on  every  main? 

Ruin  and  wreck  are  at  our  side , 

Grim  warders  of  the  House  of  Pain. 

Where  are  the  brave , the  strong , the  fleet? 

Where  is  our  English  chivalry? 

Wild  grasses  are  their  burial-sheet, 

And  sobbing  waves  their  threnody. 

O loved  ones  lying  far  away, 

What  word  of  love  can  dead  lips  send! 

O wasted  dust!  O senseless  clay! 

Is  this  the  end!  is  this  the  end! 

Peace,  peace!  we  wrong  the  noble  dead 

To  vex  their  solemn  slumber  so: 

Though  childless , and  with  thorn-crowned  head , 
Up  the  steep  road  must  England  go. 

Yet  when  this  fiery  web  is  spun, 

Her  watchmen  shall  decry  from  far 

The  young  Republic  like  a sun 

Rise  from  these  crimson  seas  of  war. 

[98] 

We  have  here  the  same  motive,  the  same 
lesson,  which  Byron  applies  to  Rome  : — 

The  Niobe  of  Nations  — there  she  stands, 
Crownless  and  childless  in  her  voiceless  woe, 

An  empty  urn  within  her  withered  hands, 

Whose  sacred  dust  was  scattered  long  ago! 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

It  suggests  the  inevitable  end  of  all  em- 
pire, of  all  dominion  of  man  over  man  by 
force  of  arms.  More  than  all  who  fall  in  bat- 
tle or  are  wasted  in  the  camps,  the  nation 
misses  the  “fair  women  and  brave  men” 
who  should  have  been  the  descendants  of 
the  strong  and  the  manly.  If  we  may  per- 
sonify the  spirit  of  the  nation,  it  grieves 
most  not  over  its  “unreturning  brave,”  but 
over  those  who  might  have  been,  but  never 
were,  and  who,  so  long  as  history  lasts,  can 
never  be. 

Against  this  view  is  urged  the  statement 
that  the  soldier  is  not  the  best,  but  the 

'Tommy 

Atkins 

worst,  product  of  the  blood  of  the  English 
nation.  Tommy  Atkins  comes  from  the 
streets,  the  wharves,  the  graduate  of  the 
London  slums,  and  if  the  empire  is  “blue 
with  his  bones,”  it  is,  after  all,  to  the  gain 
of  England  that  her  better  blood  is  saved 
for  home  consumption,  and  that,  as  matters 
are,  the  wars  of  England  make  no  real  drain 
of  English  blood. 

[99] 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

In  so  far  as  this  is  true,  of  course  the  pres- 
ent argument  fails.  If  war  in  England  is  a 
means  of  race  improvement,  the  lesson  I 
would  read  does  not  apply  to  her.  If  Eng- 
land’s best  do  not  fall  on  the  field  of  battle, 
then  we  may  not  accuse  war  of  their  de- 
struction. The  fact  could  be  shown  by 
statistics.  If  the  men  who  have  fallen  in 
England’s  wars,  officers  and  soldiers,  rank 
and  file,  are  not  on  the  whole  fairly  repre- 
sentative of  “the  flower  of  England’s  chiv- 
alry,” then  fame  has  been  singularly  given 
to  deception.  We  have  been  told  that  the 
glories  of  Blenheim,  Trafalgar,  Waterloo, 
Majuba  Elill,  werewon  by  real  Englishmen. 
And  this,  in  fact,  is  the  truth.  In  every  na- 
tion of  Europe  the  men  chosen  for  the  army 
are  above  the  average  of  their  fellows.  The 
absolute  best  doubtless  they  are  not,  but 
still  less  are  they  the  worst.  Doubtless,  too, 
physical  excellence  is  more  considered  than 
moral  or  mental  strength;  and  certainly, 
again,  the  more  noble  the  cause,  the  more 
worthy  the  class  of  men  who  will  risk  their 
lives  for  it. 

[100] 

Not  to  confuse  the  point  by  modern  in- 

stances,  it  is  doubtless  true  that  better  men 
fell  on  both  sides  when  “Kentish  Sir  Byng 
stood  for  the  King”  than  when  the  British 
arms  forced  the  opium  trade  on  China.  No 
doubt,  in  our  own  country  better  men  fell 
at  Bunker  Hill  or  Gettysburg  than  atCerro 
Gordo  or  Chapultepec.  The  lofty  cause  de- 
mands the  lofty  sacrifice. 

It  is  the  shame  of  England  that  most  of 
her  many  wars  in  our  day  have  cost  her  very 
little.  They  havebeenscrambles  of  the  mob 
or  with  the  mob,  not  triumphs  of  democ- 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

racy. 

There  was  once  a time  when  the  struggles 
of  armies  resulted  in  a survival  of  the  fit- 
test, when  the  race  was  indeed  to  the  swift 
and  the  battle  the  strong.  The  invention  of 
“villainous  gunpowder”  has  changed  all 
this.  Except  the  kind  of  warfare  called 
guerilla,  the  quality  of  the  individual  has 
ceased  to  be  much  of  a factor.  The  clown 
can  shoot  down  the  hero, and,  in  the  words 
of  Charles  F.  Lummis,he  “doesn’t  have  to 
look  the  hero  in  the  face  while  he  shoots.” 

The  Sur- 
vival of 
the  fittest 
in  vuar 

The  shell  destroys  the  clown  and  hero 
alike,  and  the  machine-gun  mows  down 

[ioi] 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

What  of 
America ? 


[102] 


whole  ranks  impartially.  There  is  little  play 
for  selection  in  modern  war  save  what  is 
shown  in  the  process  of  enlistment. 

America  has  grown  strong  with  the 
strength  of  peace,  the  spirit  of  democracy. 
Her  wars  have  been  few.  Were  it  not  for 
the  mob  spirit,  they  would  have  been  still 
fewer;  but  in  most  of  them  she  could  not 
choose  but  fight.  Volunteer  soldiers  have 
swelled  her  armies,  men  who  went  forth  of 
their  own  free  will,  knowing  whither  they 
were  going,  believing  their  acts  to  be  right, 
and  taking  patiently  whatever  the  fates 
might  hold  in  store. 

The  feeling  for  the  righteousness  of  the 
cause,  “with  the  flavor  of  religion  in  it,” 
says  Charles  Ferguson,  “has  made  the  vol- 
unteer the  mighty  soldier  he  has  always 
been  since  the  days  of  Naseby  and  Marston 
Moor.”  Only  with  volunteer  soldiers  can 
democracy  go  into  war.  When  America 
fights  with  professional  troops,  she  will  be 
no  longer  America.  We  shall  then  be,  with 
the  rest  of  the  militant  world,  under  mob 
rule.  “It  is  the  mission  of  democracy,”  says 
Ferguson  again,  “to  put  down  the  rule  of 


the  mob.  In  monarchies  and  aristocracies  it 
is  the  mob  that  rules.  It  is  puerile  to  sup- 
pose that  kingdoms  are  made  by  kings. 
The  king  could  do  nothing  if  the  mob  did 
not  throw  up  its  cap  when  the  king  rides  by. 
The  king  is  consented  to  by  the  mob  be- 
cause of  that  which  in  him  is  mob-like.  The 
mob  loves  glory  and  prizes.  So  does  the 
king.  If  he  loved  beauty  and  justice,  the 
mob  would  shout  for  him  while  the  fine 
words  were  sounding  in  the  air;  but  he 
could  never  celebrate  a jubilee  or  establish 
a dynasty.  When  the  crowd  gets  ready  to 
demand  justice  and  beauty,  it  becomes  a 
democracy,  and  has  done  with  kings.” 

It  was  at  Lexington  that  “the  embattled 
farmers”  “fired  the  shot  heard  round  the 
world.”  To  them  life  was  of  less  value  than 
a principle,  the  principle  written  by  Crom- 
well on  the  statute-book  of  Parliament: 
“All  just  powers  under  God  are  derived 
from  the  consent  of  the  people.”  Since  the 
war  of  the  Revolution  many  patriotic  soci- 
eties have  arisen  in  the  United  States. 
These  may  be  typified  by  the  association  of 
the  “Sons  of  the  Revolution,”  and  of  the 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


Signifi- 
cance of 
“ Sons  of 
the  Revo- 
lution ’ ’ 


[ 1 °3] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

“Sons  of  American  Wars,”  societies  which 
find  their  inspiration  in  the  personal  descent 
of  their  members  from  those  who  fought  for 
American  independence.  The  assumption, 
well  justified  by  facts,  is  that  revolutionary 
fathers  were  a superior  type  of  men,  and 
that  to  have  had  such  names  in  our  person- 
al ancestry  is  of  itself  a cause  for  thinking 
more  highly  of  ourselves.  In  our  little  pri- 
vate round  of  peaceful  duties  we  feel  that 
we  might  have  wrought  the  deeds  of  Put- 
nam and  Allen,  of  Marion  and  Greene,  of 
our  Revolutionary  ancestors,  whoever  they 
may  have  been.  But  if  those  who  survived 
were  nobler  than  the  mass,  so  also  were 
those  who  fell.  If  we  go  over  the  record  of 
brave  men  and  wise  women  whose  fathers 

War 

sometimes 

inevitable 

[ 1 °4] 

fought  at  Lexington,  we  must  think  also  of 
the  men  and  women  who  shall  never  be, 
whose  right  to  exist  was  cut  short  at  this 
same  battle.  It  is  a costly  thing  to  kill  off 
men,  for  in  men  alone  and  the  sons  of  men 
can  national  greatness  consist. 

Butsometimes  there  is  no  other  alternative. 
War  is  sometimes  inevitable.  It  is  some- 
times necessary,  sometimes  even  righteous. 

It  happened  once  in  our  history  that  for 
“every  drop  of  blood  drawn  by  the  lash  an- 
other must  be  drawn  by  the  sword.”  It  cost 
us  six  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  lives  to  get 
rid  of  slavery.  And  this  number,  almost  a 
million,  North  and  South,  was  the  “best  that 
the  nation  could  bring.”  North  and  South, 
the  nation  was  impoverished  by  the  loss. 
The  gaps  they  left  are  filled  to  all  appearance. 
There  are  relatively  few  of  us  left  to-day  in 
whose  hearts  the  scars  of  forty  years  ago  are 
still  unhealing.  But  a new  generation  has 
grown  up  of  men  and  women  born  since 
thewar.  They  have  taken  the  nation’s  prob- 
lems into  their  hands,  but  theirs  are  hands 
not  so  strong  or  so  clean  as  though  the  men 
that  are  stood  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  the 
men  that  might  have  been.  The  men  that 
died  in  “the  weary  time”  had  better  stuff  in 
them  than  the  father  of  the  average  man  of 
to-day. 

Those  stateswhich  lostmostof  theirstrong 
young  blood,  as  Virginia  and  South  Caro- 
lina,will  not  recover  forcenturies — perhaps 
never! 

Read  again  Brownell’s  rhymed  roll  of  hon- 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


[105] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

or,  and  we  shall  see  its  deeper  meaning:  — 

Of  little  the  storm  has  reft  us 

Bronxi- 
neW  s 
“Roll  of 
Honor  ’ 

But  the  brave  and  kindly  clay, 

(’Tis  but  dust  where  Lander  left  us, 

And  but  turf  where  Lyon  lay). 

There’s  Winthrop,  true  to  the  end, 

And  Ellsworth  of  long  ago, 

(First  fair  young  head  laid  low!) 

There’s  Baker,  the  firm,  staunch  friend, 
And  Douglas,  the  friendly  foe: 

(Baker,  that  still  stood  up 

When  ’twas  death  on  either  hand: 

“ ’Tis  a soldier’s  part  to  stoop, 

But  the  Senator  must  stand.”) 

The  heroes  gather  and  form: 

There’s  Cameron,  with  his  scars, 

Sedgwick,  of  siege  and  storm, 

And  Mitchell,  that  joined  his  stars. 

Winthrop,  of  sword  and  pen, 

Wadsworth,  with  silver  hair, 

Mansfield,  ruler  of  men, 

And  brave  McPherson  are  there. 

[106] 

Birney,  who  led  so  long, 

Abbott,  born  to  command, 

Elliott  the  bold,  and  Strong, 

Who  fell  on  the  hard-fought  strand. 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


Lytle,  soldier  and  bard, 

And  the  Ellets,  sire  and  son, 

Ransom,  all  grandly  scarred. 

And  Redfield,  no  more  on  guard, 

(But  Alatoona  is  won!) 

Reno,  of  pure  desert, 

Kearney,  with  heart  of  flame, 

And  Russell,  that  hid  his  hurt 
Till  the  final  death-bolt  came. 

Terrill,  dead  where  he  fought, 

Wallace,  that  would  not  yield, 

And  Sumner,  who  vainly  sought 
A grave  on  the  foughten  field, 

(But  died  ere  the  end  he  saw, 

With  years  and  battles  outworn). 
There’s  Harmon  of  Kenesaw, 

And  Ulric  Dahlgren,  and  Shaw,1 
That  slept  with  his  Hope  Forlorn. 

1 Compare  John  Hay’s  reference  to  Colonel  Shaw  : — 


With  an  eye  like  a Boston  girl’s  ; 

And  I saw  the  light  of  heaven  that  shone 
In  Ulrich  Dahlgren’s  curls ! 


[t°7] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

Bayard,  that  knew  not  fear 
(True  as  the  knight  of  yore), 

And  Putnam,  and  Paul  Revere, 

Worthy  the  names  they  bore. 

Allen,  who  died  for  others, 

Bryan,  of  gentle  fame, 

And  the  brave  New-England  brothers 

That  have  left  us  Lowell’s  name. 

Home,  at  last,  from  the  wars, — 

Stedman,  the  staunch  and  mild, 

And  Janeway,  our  hero-child, 

Home,  with  his  fifteen  scars! 

There’s  Porter,  ever  in  front, 

True  son  of  a sea-king  sire, 

And  Christian  Foote,  and  Dupont 
(Dupont,  who  led  his  ships 

Rounding  the  first  Ellipse 

Of  thunder  and  of  fire). 

There’s  Ward,  with  his  brave  death-wounds, 
And  Cummings,  of  spotless  name, 

And  Smith,  who  hurtled  his  rounds 

When  deck  and  hatch  were  aflame; 

CIo8l 

Wain wright,  steadfast  and  true, 

Rodgers,  of  brave  sea-blood, 

And  Craven,  with  ship  and  crew 
Sunk  in  the  salt  sea-flood. 

And,  a little  later  to  part, 

Our  Captain,  loved  and  dear  — 
(Did  we  deem  thee,  then,  austere  ? 

Drayton!  — O pure  and  kindly  heart! 
Thine  is  the  seaman’s  tear). 

All  such,  — and  many  another 
(Ah,  list  how  long  to  name!) 

That  stood  like  brother  by  brother, 
And  died  on  the  field  of  fame. 

(But,  a little  from  the  rest, 

With  sad  eyes  looking  down, 

And  brows  of  softened  frown, 

With  stern  arms  on  the  chest, 

Are  two,  standing  abreast, — 

Stonewall  and  Old  John  Brown). 

But  the  stainless  and  the  true, 

These  by  their  President  stand, 

To  look  on  his  last  review, 

Or  march  with  the  old  command. 

And  lo,  from  a thousand  fields, 

From  all  the  old  battle-haunts, 

A greater  Army  than  Sherman  wields, 
A grander  Review  than  Grant’s ! 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


[x°9] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

Gathered  home  from  the  grave, 

Risen  from  sun  and  rain,  — 

Rescued  from  wind  and  wave, 

Out  of  the  stormy  main, — 

The  Legions  of  our  Brave 

Are  all  in  their  lines  again! 

Many  a stout  corps  that  went 

Full-ranked  from  camp  and  tent, 

And  brought  back  a brigade; 

Many  a brave  regiment, 

That  mustered  only  a squad. 

The  lost  battalions 

That,  when  the  fight  went  wrong, 
Stood  and  died  at  their  guns, — 

The  stormers  steady  and  strong. 

With  their  best  blood  that  bought 

Scarp  and  ravelin  and  wall  — 

The  companies  that  fought 

Till  a corporal’s  guard  was  all. 

[no] 

Many  a valiant  crew 

That  passed  in  battle  wreck, 

Ah,  so  faithful  and  true ! 

They  died  on  the  bloody  deck, 

They  sank  in  the  soundless  blue. 

The  shattered  wreck  we  hurried, 

In  death-fight,  from  deck  and  port,  — 
The  blacks  that  Wagner  buried, 

That  died  in  the  Bloody  Fort! 

Comrades  of  camp  and  mess, 

Left,  as  they  lay,  to  die, 

In  the  battle’s  sorest  stress, 

When  the  storm  of  fight  swept  by: 

They  lay  in  the  Wilderness  — 

Ah,  where  did  they  not  lie  ? 

In  the  tangled  swamp  they  lay, 

They  lay  so  still  on  the  sward  ! — 

They  rolled  in  the  sick-bay, 

Moaning  their  lives  away;  — 

They  flushed  in  the  fevered  ward. 

But  the  old  wounds  are  all  healed, 

And  the  dungeoned  limbs  are  free, — 

The  Blue  Frocks  rise  from  the  field, 

The  Blue  Jackets  out  of  the  sea. 

O tenderer  green  than  May 

The  Eternal  Season  wears, — 

The  blue  of  our  summer’s  day 

Is  dim  and  pallid  to  theirs, — 

The  Horror  faded  away, 

And  ’twas  heaven  all  unawares!1 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

'“Abraham  Lincoln,”  by  Henry  Howard  Brownell. 

[in] 

1 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

In  the  same  vein  Bret  Harte  tells  us  of 
the  phantom  “ Last  Review  of  the  Grand 
Army  of  the  Republic”:  — 

The 

Phantom 

Army 

I saw  a phantom  army  come 

With  never  a sound  of  fife  or  drum, 

But  keeping  time  to  a throbbing  hum 

Of  wailing  and  lamentation. 

The  martyred  heroes  of  Malvern  Hill, 

Of  Gettysburg  and  of  Chancellorsville, 

The  men  whose  wasted  figures  fill 

The  patriot  graves  of  the  nation. 

And  then  came  the  nameless  dead,  the  men 
Who  perished  in  fever-swamp  and  fen, 

The  slowly  starved  of  the  prison-pen  ; 

And,  marching  beside  the  others, 

Came  the  dusky  martyrs  of  Pillow’s  fight, 
With  limbs  enfranchised  and  beaming  bright ; 

I thought  — but  perhaps  ’twas  the  pale  moon- 
light — 

They  looked  as  white  as  their  brothers  ! 

[II2] 

And  so  all  night  marched  the  nation’s  dead, 
With  never  a banner  above  them  spread, 

Nor  a badge  nor  a motto  brandished  : 

No  mark  save  the  bare  uncovered  head 

Of  the  silent  bronze  Reviewer. 

With  never  an  arch  save  the  vaulted  sky, 
With  never  a flower  save  those  that  lie 
On  the  distant  graves  — for  love  could  buy 
No  gift  that  was  purer  or  truer. 

“ The  remnant  just  eleven  ; 

The  bayonets  one  thousand  were 
And  the  swords  were  thirty-seven.” 

All  the  names  that  history  has  saved  from 
the  Civil  War,  as  from  any  other  war,  are 
in  the  list  of  the  officers.  But  no  less  worthy 
were  the  men  in  the  ranks.  It  is  the  para- 
dox of  democracy  that  its  greatness  is  less 
in  the  ranks.  “Are  all  the  common  ones 
so  grand,  and  all  the  titled  ones  so  mean  ?” 1 

North  or  South,  it  was  the  same.  “Send 
forth  the  best  ye  breed”  was  the  call  on 
both  sides  alike,  and  to  this  call  both  sides 
alike  responded.  As  it  will  take  “centuries 
of  peace  and  prosperity  to  make  good  the 
tall  statures  mowed  down  in  the  Napoleonic 

1 Is  there  never  one  in  all  the  land. 

One  on  whose  might  the  cause  may  lean? 

Are  all  the  common  ones  so  grand 
And  all  the  titled  ones  so  mean?” 

— Edmund  Clarence  Stedman,  1862. 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


[ 1 1 3] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

wars,”  so  like  centuries  of  wisdom  and  vir- 
tue are  needed  to  restore  to  our  nation  its 
lost  inheritance  of  patriotism, — not  the  ca- 
pacity for  patriotic  talk,  for  of  that  there 
has  been  no  abatement,  but  of  that  faith  and 
truth  which  “ on  war’s  red  touchstone  rang 
true  metal.”  We  can  never  know  what 
might  have  been.  We  can  never  know  how 
great  is  our  actual  loss,  nor  can  we  know 
how  far  the  men  that  are  fall  short  of  the 
men  that  ought  to  have  been. 

The  gap  in  our  picked  and  chosen, 

The  long  years  may  not  fill. 

[”4] 

An  English  University  professor  on  a late 
visit  to  America  told  me  that  his  most  vivid 
impression  came  from  a casual  reference  to 
the  one  hundred  and  fifteenth  (or  some  sim- 
ilarly numbered)  regiment  of  Massachu- 
setts volunteers — that  a little  district  like 
Massachusetts  should  contribute  115,000 
men  to  the  Civil  War  gave  an  impression  of 
the  mightiness  and  the  cost  of  that  strug- 
gle he  had  gained  in  no  other  way. 

It  may  be  that  the  vexing  problems  of  to- 
day, the  problems  of  greed  and  lawlessness, 

would  be  easier  if  we  had  the  men  who 
ought  to  havebeen  to  help  us  in  their  settle- 
ment. “ The  hencoop  is  always  full,  what- 
ever thenumber  of  hens.”  Our  country  fills 
up  like  an  overflowing  marsh  ; but  the  men 
that  are  are  not  all  of  the  same  lineage  with 
the  men  who  might  have  been. 

To  some  extent,  at  least,  Vir  has  given 
place  to  Homo  in  our  American  cities  and  in 
our  public  life.  Among  us,  perchance,  there 
might  have  been  many  a Brutus  who  would 
have  brooked  the  Eternal  Devil  to  take  his 
seat  in  the  Republic  as  easily  as  some  of  the 
tyrants  to  which  we  adjust  ourselves  in  hope- 
less uncomplaint. 

It  is  related  that  Guizot  once  asked  this 
question  of  James  Russell  Lowell:  “How 
longwill  the  Republic  endure?”  “So  long  as 
the  ideas  of  its  founders  remain  dominant,” 
was  the  answer.  But  again  we  have  this  ques- 
tion: “How  longwill  the  ideas  of  its  found- 
ers remain  dominant  ?”  Just  so  long  as  the 
blood  of  the  founders  remains  dominant  in 
the  blood  of  its  people.  Not  necessarily  the 
blood  of  the  Puritans  and  the  Virginians 
alone,  the  original  creators  of  the  land  of 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


Ho-uu  long 
<will  the 
Republic 
last  ? 


[ 1 1 5] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


Like  the 
seed  is  the 
harvest 


[116] 


free  states.  We  must  not  read  our  history 
so  narrowly  as  that.  It  is  the  blood  of  free- 
born men,  be  they  Greek,  Roman,  Frank, 
Saxon,  Norman,  Dane,  Celt,  Scot,  Goth,  or 
Samurai.  It  is  a free  stock  which  creates  a 
free  nation.  Our  republic  shall  endure  so 
long  as  the  human  harvest  is  good,  so  long 
as  the  movement  of  history,  the  progress  of 
science  and  industry  leaves  for  the  future 
not  the  worst  but  the  best  of  each  genera- 
tion. The  Republic  of  Rome  lasted  so  long 
as  there  were  Romans  ; the  Republic  of 
America  will  last  so  long  as  its  people,  in 
blood  and  in  spirit,  remain  what  we  have 
learned  to  call  Americans. 

By  the  law  of  probabilities  as  developed 
by  Quetelet,  there  will  appear  in  each  gene- 
ration the  same  number  of  potential  poets, 
artists,  investigators,  patriots,  athletes  and 
superior  men  of  each  degree. 

But  this  law  involves  the  theory  of  con- 
tinuity of  paternity,  that  in  each  generation 
a percentage  practically  equal  of  men  of  su- 
perior force  or  superior  mentality  should 
surviveto  take theresponsibilitiesof  parent- 
hood. Otherwise  Ouetelet’s  law  becomes 


subject  to  the  operation  of  another  law,  the 
operation  of  reversed  selection,  or  the  bio- 
logical “law  of  diminishing  returns.”  In 
other  words,  breeding  from  an  inferior  stock 
is  the  sole  agency  in  race  degeneration,  as 
selection  natural  or  artificial  along  one  line 
or  another  is  the  sole  agency  in  race  prog- 
ress. 

And  all  laws  of  probabilities  and  of  aver- 
ages are  subject  to  a still  higher  law,  the 
primal  law  of  biology,  which  no  cross-cur- 
rent of  life  can  overrule  or  modify:  Like  the 
seed  is  the  harvest. 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

Ruskin  once  said  that  “ war  is  the  foun- 
dation of  all  high  virtues  and  faculties  of 
men.”  As  well  might  the  maker  of  phrases 
say  that  fire  is  the  builder  of  the  forest,  for 
only  in  the  flame  of  destruction  do  we  real- 
ize the  warmth  and  strength  that  lie  in  the 
heart  of  oak.  Another  writer,  Hardwick, 
declares  that  “ war  is  essential  to  the  life  of 

War  as  a 
source  of 
national 
strength 

a nation  ; war  strengthens  a nation  morally, 
mentally  and  physically.”  Such  statements 
as  these  set  all  history  at  defiance.  War  can 
only  waste  and  corrupt.  “ All  war  is  bad, 
some  only  worse  than  others.”  “War  has 

C1  x7] 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

its  origin  in  the  evil  passions  of  men,”  and 
even  when  unavoidable  or  righteous  its 
effects  are  most  baleful.  The  final  effect  of 
each  strife  for  empire  has  been  the  degra- 
dation or  extinction  of  the  nation  which  led 

War  one 
influence 
among 
many 

in  the  struggle. 

Itwill,no  doubt, be  said  by  those  whoread 
this  little  book  that  all  this  is  exaggeration, 
that  war  is  but  one  influence  among  many, 
and  that  for  each  and  all  these  forms  of  de- 
structive selection  civilization  will  find  an 
antidote.  This  is  very  true.  The  antidote 
is  found  in  the  spirit  of  democracy,  and  the 
spirit  of  democracy  is  the  spirit  of  peace. 
Doubtless  these  pages  constitute  an  exag- 
geration. They  were  written  for  that  pur- 
pose. I would  show  the  “ ugly,  old,  and 
wrinkled  truth  stripped  clean  of  all  the  ves- 
ture that  beguiles.”  To  see  anything  clearly 
and  separately  is  to  exaggerate  it.  The 
naked  truth  is  always  a caricature  unless 
clothed  in  conventions,  fragments  taken 
from  lesser  truths.  The  moral  law  is  an 
exaggeration:  “The  soul  that  sinneth,  it 
shall  die.”  Doubtless  one  war  will  not  ruin 

i — i 

00 

M 

HH 

a nation.  Doubtless  it  will  not  destroy  its 

vitality  or  impair  its  blood.  Doubtless  a 
dozen  wars  may  do  all  this.  The  difference 
is  one  of  degree  alone  ; I wish  only  to  point 
out  the  tendency.  That  the  death  of  the 
strong  is  a true  cause  of  the  decline  of  nations 
is  a fact  beyond  cavil  or  question.  The  “ man 
who  is  left  ” holds  always  the  future  in  his 
grasp.  One  of  the  great  books  of  our  cen- 
tury will  be  some  day  written  on  the  selec- 
tion of  men,  the  screening  of  human  life 
through  the  actions  of  man  and  the  oper- 
ation of  the  institutions  men  have  built  up. 

It  will  be  a survey  of  the  stream  of  social 
history,  its  whirls  and  eddies,  rapids  and 
still  waters,  and  the  effect  of  each  and  all  of 
its  conditions  on  the  heredity  of  men.  The 
survival  of  the  fit  and  the  unfit  in  all  degrees 
and  conditions  will  be  its  subject-matter. 
This  book  will  be  written,  not  roughly  and 
hastily,  like  the  present  fragmentary  essay, 
the  work  of  one  whose  business  of  life  runs 

The 

Human 

Harvest 

in  wholly  different  lines.  Still  less  will  it  be 
a brilliant  effort  of  some  analytical  imagi- 
nation. It  will  set  down  soberly  and  statis- 
tically the  array  of  facts  which  as  yet  no  one 
possesses;  and  the  new  Darwin  whose  work 

[JI9] 

The 

Human 

Harvest 


Advanta- 
ges of  civ- 
il voar 


[120] 


it  shall  be  must,  like  his  predecessor,  spend 
twenty-five  years  in  the  gathering  of  “ all 
facts  that canpossibly  bear  on  the  question.” 
When  such  a book  is  written, we  shall  know 
for  the  first  time  the  real  significance  of  war. 

If  any  war  is  good,  civil  war  must  be  best. 
The  virtues  of  victory  and  the  lessons  of 
defeat  would  be  kept  within  the  nation. 
This  would  protect  the  nation  from  the 
temptation  to  fight  for  gold  or  trade.  Civil 
war  under  proper  limitations  could  remedy 
this.  A time  limit  could  be  adopted,  as  in 
football,  and  every  device  known  to  the 
arena  could  be  used  to  get  the  good  of  war 
and  to  escape  its  evils. 

For  example,  of  all  our  states,  New  York 
and  Illinois  have  doubtless  suffered  most 
from  the  evils  of  peace,  if  peace  has  evils 
which  disappear  with  wTar.  They  could  be 
pitted  against  each  other,  while  the  other 
States  looked  on.  The  C£  dark  and  bloody 
ground  ” of  Kentucky  could  be  made  the 
arena.  This  would  not  interfere  with  trade 
in  Chicago, nor  soil  the  streets  of  Baltimore. 
The  armies  could  befilledupfrom  the  ranks 
of  the  unemployed,  while  the  pasteboard 


heroes  of  the  national  guard  could  act  as 
officers.  All  could  be  done  in  decency  and 
order,  with  norecriminations  and  no  oppres- 
sion of  an  alien  foe.  We  should  have  all  that 
is  good  in  war,  its  pomp  and  circumstance, 
the  “ grim  resolution  of  the  London  clubs,” 
without  war’s  long  train  of  murderous  evils. 
Who  could  deny  this  ? And  yet  who  could 
defend  it? 

If  war  is  good,  we  should  have  it  regard- 
less of  its  cost,  regardless  of  its  horrors,  its 
sorrows,  its  anguish,  havoc,  and  waste. 

But  war  is  bad,  only  to  be  justified  as  the 
last  resort  of  “mangled,  murdered  liberty,” 
a terrible  agency  to  be  evoked  only  when 
all  other  arts  of  self-defence  shall  fail.  The 
remedy  for  most  ills  of  men  is  not  to  be 
sought  in  “whirlwinds  of  rebellion  that 
shake  the  world,”  but  in  peace  and  justice, 
equality  among  men,  and  the  cultivation  of 
those  virtues  we  call  Christian, because  they 
havebeenvirtuesever  since  man  and  society 
began,  and  will  be  virtues  still  when  the  era 
of  strife  is  past,  when  false  glory  ceases  to 
deceive,  and  when  no  longer 


The 

Human 

Harvest 


The  best 
political 
economy 


[12!] 


The 

Human 

Harvest 

The  redcoat  bully  in  his  boots 

Shall  hide  the  march  of  man  from  us. 

It  is  the  voice  of  political  wisdom,  the  ex- 
pression of  the  “ best  political  economy,” 
which  falls  from  the  bells  of  Christmas-tide : 

“ Peace  on  earth,  good  will  towards  men  !” 

[i  22] 

Date  Due 


Qct22’>4* 

K:  '35 

r 

^nv2i:,  • - 

higizm^ 

Ui<r* 

30  ’40 

BESERV 

— rRVED 

p&  2 7 5C 

"If  -i 

he  4 

1 

Jnr/v  ■ ■ 

* 

Library  Bureau  Cat.  no.  1137 

DUKE  UNIVERSITY 
LIBRARY 


DURHAM,  NORTH  CAROLINA 
27706 


